


The Tongueless Caverns of the Earth

by Annakovsky



Category: Jonas Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Vampire Slayer, Apocalypse, Dubious Consent, Horror, Incest, M/M, Sibling Incest, Vampire Sex, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-06
Updated: 2010-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:55:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/pseuds/Annakovsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vampires have overrun civilization, and humans huddle in walled cities, surviving as best they can, never venturing out at night. After the death of his family, Nick Jonas, former tween pop star, has become a government-employed vampire hunter, working alone and trying to forget the past. But after a year of running from what happened, something's behind him, hunting him in turn, and the past won't stay buried where it belongs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tongueless Caverns of the Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, this is a complete work of fiction and in no way reflects the actual lives of the Jonas Brothers.
> 
> Please heed the warnings; this is a horror story and pretty disturbing. The underage is age 17; as well there is past off-screen implied non-con.
> 
> This story was written for the Jonas Brothers big bang challenge; thanks to tearupthesky, fodian, and swmbo for extremely helpful beta jobs, and londondrowning for cheerleading/advice. Also a huge thanks to my artist, sarahtoga, who did a _fantastic_ job and created amazing cover art which you can see [here](http://sarahtoga.livejournal.com/13575.html)!

Nick thought he could make Cincinnati by noon, but he meets with a few delays along I-71, skirting the edge of the woods. By three he's getting worried he's not even going to make it before the gates close at nightfall, earlier every day now that it's October, and he picks up the pace, hurrying even with the bulk of the heavy bag bouncing over his shoulder. He shouldn't go this long between stops -- his arm is aching and the weight is slowing him down. Stupid. It's going to be even worse tomorrow if he has to spend another night outside the cities.

But the sun's still at least a couple degrees above the horizon by the time the bridge comes into view and he feels the relief of it flood through him. He made it. He trots out to the middle of the road, seeing the cameras on the edge of the bridge focus in on him. In case the guards have any doubts about him, he turns his face to the sun, letting the golden light wash over his skin, and walks steadily to the expanse of the bridge, where nothing's moving.

The gates on the far side are still open -- that's good. Some cities have gotten so paranoid they're shutting them a good hour before sunset. Things must not be so bad out here, crossing from Kentucky into Ohio.

He always hates the walk across these bridges, knowing he's being watched, a solitary dark figure crossing the river. He has to force himself to keep a steady pace, not break into a jog. When he reaches the gate tower, it's manned by a couple of grizzled older guys with crew cuts drinking coffee, crossbows slung over their shoulders, one of them telling the other a story that sounds pretty dirty. They probably used to be National Guard -- they don't have the look ex-Marines do. They're a little more slovenly, guts hanging over their belts.

They don't stop talking when Nick comes up, like they're too busy to notice he's there, even though he knows they've been watching him ever since he came into view. He waits.

Finally the story ends and they both laugh uproariously, and the bigger one eyes Nick, reaching for his official gate log slowly, like he's in no rush. Nick knows he can see how the bag bulges over Nick's shoulder, the stakes Nick has strapped to his back over his leather jacket, the machete he has on his hip. "Good hunt?" the guard asks. He looks dubious, like he thinks Nick's young for that. Yeah, well.

"Yeah," Nick says. These city guards -- easy living. Nick doesn't think much of them.

"Mmm," the guard says, and he takes down Nick's name and social and all the other administrative B.S. they always ask for. It always seems like it takes forever when Nick's in a hurry like this, wanting to get to Collections before it closes.

"Where's the closest Collections Office?" Nick asks when they're finally done, and they point him in the right direction. It's only a few blocks over.

He makes it there forty-five minutes before it closes, but it's always a pain to get here this late in the day -- it's usually more crowded, and sometimes they'll make you come back the next day if they don't get to you in time and they want to go home instead of doing their jobs the way they're supposed to. Government employees -- he swears Collections is worse than the DMV.

Nick takes a number and sits down to wait. Cincinnati seems to be slow, at least -- there are only two other people ahead of him, so it isn't long before he's called.

The woman who calls him up looks bored, like she mentally went home for the day about an hour ago. It takes Nick a second to remember it's Monday. _Someone's got a case of the Mondays,_ he thinks to himself automatically. It feels foreign remembering that, like it's from some culture from halfway around the world instead of his own.

"How many?" the woman asks. She's chewing gum, and her nails are painted a deep orange. Her nametag says, "Michelle."

"Eight," Nick says, resting the bag on the floor next to his feet.

She raises her eyebrows at that, mildly impressed, and enters it into the computer. She keeps pausing to type, actually, a little more than she needs to, pretending that it's work. Nick comes to Collections Offices pretty often, though, so he knows how much they usually type. He thinks she might be IMing someone.

"All right, let's see them," she says once she's finished typing, and Nick reaches into the bag for the first head. It's a female with long blonde hair that's easy to grab.

He slings it up onto the counter, turning it so the face is toward her, and Michelle automatically lifts the lip, checking for the fangs. They're there all right, and then she checks the head with a mirror, just to be sure. No reflection, definitely not human, even though otherwise it looks it.

"One," Michelle says, typing the information into the computer, and then she drops the head back onto the conveyor belt behind her. It wobbles as it lands, almost hitting a really torn-up male head coming down the conveyor belt behind it, before settling on its neck, tangled hair moving a little in the breeze as it's carried to the left. Nick watches it disappear through the rubber curtain and into the back, to wherever the heads go once they've been catalogued.

It feels like it takes forever to get through all eight -- Michelle's IMing way too much, even though she's pretty efficient at the rest of it, doesn't seem bothered by the staring dead eyes, the waxy, bloodless skin. Nick hates it when he gets someone new; once a guy had to stop in the middle to throw up, and Nick doesn't have time for that. He doesn't have time for IMing either, but there's not a lot he can do about it except keep getting antsier -- he wants to get over to payroll before they close. Too bad it's not Thursday. All these offices stay open later on Thursdays.

Finally, finally, the last head's on the conveyor belt, and Michelle's printing out the receipt for him to sign. "Would you like us to mail you the check?" she asks.

Nick doesn't know why they always ask that, like that's the default. Like most hunters have a permanent address. "No, thanks," he says. "I'll take cash."

She nods, looking unsurprised. "Hey," she says, just before he goes. "Has anybody ever told you that you look like that kid from that band -- you know, whatsitcalled, the one -- oh my God, I can't believe I'm blanking. That one for the eight-year-old girls? What was their name? Not Hannah Montana, the one with the brothers."

Nick looks politely blank and doesn't say anything.

She shakes her head, laughing a little. "Yeah, I guess you weren't really in their demographic. God, that's going to bother me. I wonder what ever happened to them."

Nick shrugs. "Probably what happened to everybody," he says.

Her smile fades a little. "Yeah," she says.

And, having ruined another day, Nick's off to payroll. Bureaucracy and people telling him he looks like Nick Jonas. No wonder he puts off coming to Collections. It's good to have the weight off, though, the bag folded up empty again and put back in his pack. He feels the lightness, and at $500 a head, he's going to be pretty flush for awhile, even after putting most of it into his savings account. Maybe he'll stay in a hotel tonight. Watch whatever's on the Cincinnati channels. Take a bath. He can't leave until the sun comes up again anyway, so he might as well enjoy the comforts of civilization while he can, such as they are.

**

He has that dream again. It's because he's sleeping in a bed -- he always thinks this time it'll be all right, that this time a hotel room won't remind his subconscious of that other hotel room, the last hotel room, but every single time he wakes up at 3 am, gasping. Lies there in terror in the dark, so scared it takes him a good five minutes to work up the courage to reach out over the edge of the bed far enough to turn on the light, his hand shaking, his joints stiff with horror.

He half expects to see dark pools of blood spreading across the floor, half expects to see the mutilated bodies of his family sprawled in the middle of them. But the light comes on warm and yellow and the carpet's plain taupe, clean and unstained, the whole room quiet and still and empty, just like always.

His stomach's churning like he might puke and he's drenched in cold sweat; he somehow manages to sit up, moving his head off the soaked, disgusting pillow to rest his cheek on his knees. His heart won't slow down again, even with the light on. Finally he has to get up and go into the bathroom, where he starts running warm water and splashing it in his face, over and over again. Washing the sweat off, hoping it'll somehow wash the dream off. He's still shaking all over, the dream lingering in his muscles, but it was just a dream, it's over. It's all been over a long time.

He splashes his face until he's flushed and breathless and blinking water out of his eyes. As he reaches out for the hand towel, just for a second he sees a face in the mirror behind him.

"Joe?" he says, blinking furiously, his heart pounding.

It's not him, though. Of course it's not him. It's just a towel, crumpled up on the shelf behind him in a way where the shadows looked like a face for a second. God. Nick really feels like he's going to throw up.

He can't go back to sleep. He finally digs the Gideon Bible out of the side table and flips through the Psalms until he finds the one about the terror by night and the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, and then reads it over and over, hoping it'll be comforting, help him sleep, get over the horror of the dream. But the part that says "if you make God your refuge no harm will befall you" just makes him mad. Instead after awhile he flips to the psalm about wanting to smash your enemies' babies against rocks, but even that doesn't calm him down. He ends up sitting up in the hotel chair, restless, watching the horizon out the window as it turns from black to navy to gray, watching the city take dull shape in the dusk of the morning. Sleep's overrated anyway.

**

He gets out of that hotel room as soon as he reasonably can, long before the city gates open. Just, there's really not any point to sitting around that room alone. Might as well go wait by the gates, be the first one out of the city when they finally open. It's not that the hotel was a total mistake -- he's clean now, at least, which is a relief. Even if after having been on the road for so long he's gotten used to how he smells when he's not, so now he feels like he reeks of soap and shampoo, his hair still damp as he leaves the room.

In the predawn twilight, Nick wanders up to the bulletin board outside the gatehouse door. A lot of cities put their Most Wanted posters up here for the hunters to check out, pictures and information about the worst vampires terrorizing the city, the ones worth an extra reward. A lot of times their families will have supplied the pictures, hoping a hunter will find them, put them out of their misery, let their dead loved one's body finally rest in peace, blah blah.

Nick looks at the pictures idly. One poster is for two vampires, a brother and sister, all blond and blue-eyed. The brother has his hair longish, like a surfer, and they both look All-American and perfect, angelic. Nick really enjoys killing ones like that. These ones have been in the Cincinnati area for months -- they think the brother turned the sister, infected her. It's a pretty common story. Nick adjusts the crucifix hanging around his neck.

The posters get boring pretty fast, though, so Nick eventually sits down on the cold ground, leaning his back against the wall and getting an apple out of his pack to eat for breakfast while he waits. That's the nice thing about October, how the apples are in season, these small, hard, tart ones from the local orchards. The not-so-nice thing about October is how cold it is in the morning before the sun comes up, how the chill of the bricks behind him is seeping through his leather jacket. He's still the only person here waiting for the gates to open.

As he glances around, idly licking juice from the apple off the back of his hand, he sees two guys are coming up the street toward him, the first movement he's seen since he's been sitting here. It's still dim out, but lightening, the eastern sky pink, the sun getting closer to coming over the top of the horizon. The guys are clearly hunters too -- the way they walk, the stakes stuck in their belts, how worn their wool coats are. Their hair is shaggy, and they're older than Nick, the way most hunters are, maybe thirty-ish. All hardened muscle. One of them has a guitar strapped to his back.

Nick eyes it. It's acoustic, not in a case, which isn't good for it in this chill. The dark-haired guy wearing it takes it off as they come up to the gatehouse, leaning it against the wall, not even being very careful with it. But it's not a particularly good guitar -- Nick's in the middle of craning his head to see the brand when the hunters see him looking. The dark-haired one smiles crookedly at him. "You play?" he asks.

Nick pauses for a second. His fingers feel like they're itching, just seeing the strings, but. "No," he says. "I don't."

The other one, who has red hair, rolls his eyes. "Well, neither does he."

"I'm learning," the dark-haired one says, sounding offended.

"It's weighing us down," the redhead says. "You know you're just going to end up getting clubbed with it at some point."

The dark-haired one smirks. "That a threat?"

The redheaded one laughs, and Nick does a little bit too, just to be polite, even though he's clearly outside their easy familiarity, the way they're a pair without having to think about it. As the dark-haired one lights up a cigarette, they subside into silence, a polite distance coming back up between them and Nick, and Nick goes back to staring into space, waiting. He's eaten his apple down to the core -- he tosses it away, so it rolls down the gutter, and wipes his sticky hands off on his jeans.

The sun comes up, finally. Nick can see it reflecting off the buildings and he hops to his feet, ready to get on the move, ready for the gates to open. But there's no movement in the gatehouse at all, like there's nobody even in there. What the hell?

When he glances around, annoyed, the two guys -- and that's actually weird, that there are still only two other people here waiting -- are looking at him, smiling slightly. The redhead says, "Cincinnati never opens the gates on time. It's probably going to be another half hour."

"At least," the dark-haired one says, taking another drag on his cigarette.

God, that's annoying. Nick lets out an exasperated breath. He really wanted to get on the road. And it's also annoying to have someone tell him how things work, like he doesn't know. Just because he hasn't been to Cincinnati before doesn't mean he's some kid who doesn't know what he's doing.

"Look on the bright side," the dark-haired one says. He's still got that irritating little smirk on his face, like Nick's all young and naive. "At least we're not in motherfucking Cleveland. How long did we have to wait there?"

"Hour and a half," the redhead says, leaning against the brick wall behind him, letting his head loll back against it.

"Really?" the other one says, like he's pretty sure that's wrong. "It felt like at least three hours."

"It was an hour and a half," the redhead says, smiling a little but shaking his head, in the tone of someone who knows what he's talking about. And who's had this discussion before.

His friend makes a face at him. "Whatever," he says. "Fucking Ohio. Worst fucking bureaucracy in the fucking union." He drops the butt of his cigarette onto the ground and toes it out with some gusto, like he's toeing out the whole state.

The redhead rolls his eyes a little and says to Nick, "They had a technical malfunction at the gate in Cleveland."

"Yeah, if being lazy asses is a technical malfunction," the crankier one mutters.

Nick laughs, because there doesn't seem much else to do. Plus, yeah, everybody running these gates is a lazy ass, so. The dark-haired one's head comes up and he smiles, like he's surprised Nick laughed.

"So, kid," he says, getting another cigarette out of his pack, holding it between calloused fingers. "Why're you in this miserable business?"

Nick shrugs, looking back at the gatehouse and hoping there'll be some movement there. There isn't. "I don't like vampires," he says. It's what he always says. His voice only shakes a little by now.

"You're a little young to be out on your own, aren't you?" the dark-haired one says. He flicks his lighter with his thumb a few times until it catches, and then bends his head over it to light the cigarette, the flame illuminating his face. It's still dim; the sun hasn't risen over the buildings yet, so the dawn hasn't quite reached them.

Nick doesn't know what to say to that. It isn't too hard to put it together, is it? Him seventeen and hunting vampires with no family around? What does this guy _think_ happened? "No," Nick says eventually. The redhead's clearly figured it out -- he's glaring at his friend and when his friend finally looks at him, the redhead shakes his head, just barely. If Nick wasn't watching for it, he wouldn't even have noticed, it's that tiny of a head shake.

The dark-haired guy winces a little, clearly suddenly realizing, and looks at Nick sidelong. "Sorry," he says. "I didn't -- uh."

God, Nick would rather he didn't even apologize, it's so much more awkward now. Luckily his friend saves them. "So where are you headed?" he asks, like everything's normal. Thank God.

"Uh, north," Nick says. Nights are longer up there, especially now that it's getting towards the solstice. He'll go all the way to Winnipeg if he can stand the cold. "Michigan, probably. How about you guys?"

The dark-haired guy exhales smoke, blowing it out the side of his mouth. "Yeah, north," he says. "We were thinking of heading up the east coast." He and the redhead exchange a glance, a little conversation with their eyes. The redhead raises his eyebrows and the dark-haired one nods slightly.

"If you wanted company," the redhead says, looking more at his friend than Nick, like they're still having a private exchange in looks. "You could travel with us for awhile. We could use your help, split the take."

Yeah, he says it like Nick'd be doing them a favor, but Nick can tell that they think he's too young for this, too inexperienced for such a dangerous job. That he's going to go out there and get himself killed or something. It's nice of them to care and all, nice of them to offer, but Nick hunts alone. Even if it makes him a little wistful when he sees hunters who work in pairs like this, who have that easy body language of trust, like a well-oiled machine, always knowing which direction the other one's going to go. Having someone to watch your back all the time. It must be nice.

It's just that Nick doesn't have anyone he trusts like that anymore, so it's better that he works by himself. There's no point in trying to force something Nick's never going to have with some stranger, even if most hunters do work in pairs, even if it's safer that way.

"Thanks," Nick says. "But I'm okay. I do better by myself."

The two guys exchange another glance, but after a second the dark-haired one shrugs, taking another drag off his cigarette. "Suit yourself," he says.

And then finally, finally, there's some movement in the gatehouse, someone getting this show on the road. Nick gets through all the administrative crap first and sets off down the road, pack on his back, the morning sun rising on his right. He assumes the other guys are behind him somewhere, but he doesn't look back, and they must take a different road, because when Nick stops for lunch, he can't see them at all.

**

Nick always keeps his eyes peeled on the way out of a city, through the deserted suburbs outside the walls. It's a really common place for vampires to hide out, sleeping in the houses during the day, trying to pick people off by night, any poor sucker who's gotten stuck outside after the gates shut.

On one street heading out of Cincinnati, Nick sees some signs of life -- a dark, relatively fresh bloodstain on the sidewalk, an empty backpack lying by the side of the road, ripped like its owner could've been attacked.

Nick follows the little clues for a block or two before he stops in front of a house that's obviously the source. Most of the abandoned houses around here are turning into ruins, doors either broken down or swollen tight in their jambs from disuse, so they'd be almost impossible to open now. Windows broken, yards overgrown. This house is pretty wrecked too, but there's a path trampled down in the long grass from the street to the door. Someone's definitely been squatting here, and odds are it isn't human.

Nick slides a stake off his back and readies it in his hand, taking a deep breath. Okay. He slips up to the door and eases it open, listening carefully for any sounds. For a second it's silent, and he thinks maybe they're gone or asleep. But then he hears a grunt and a bang, the sound of flesh slapping, like someone's in the back room fighting. Very quietly, holding his breath, Nick tightens his grip on the stake, moving toward the back of the house. The windows are badly boarded up to block out the sunlight -- definitely vampires, then -- but the sun sneaks in through the cracks, leaving the rooms in twilight, dust motes floating in the air in the occasional slim beam of light. It smells revolting, like something died in here, like something's rotting. Ugh, something probably is. Nick breathes through his mouth and tries not to think about it.

The sounds are coming from the kitchen, and Nick presses himself flat against the wall beside the door, listening for a second. They're definitely fighting.

Quietly he pushes himself off the wall and comes around the corner, pausing in the doorway with a view of the room. There are two of them, rolling around on the dirty floor of the kitchen, one on top of the other. For a split second Nick still thinks they're fighting, wrestling with each other, but then he takes in that they're naked, that the groans are something completely different, and he freezes, flushing red. Oh.

He recognizes the one on top first with his surfer hair -- it's the brother from the Most Wanted wall, his pale ass thrusting forward in a brutal rhythm. Then Nick watches as they shift, writhing together, and Nick gets a glimpse of the girl on the bottom, and oh God, it's the surfer's sister. God, it's his sister, and he's fucking her, and Nick can't move, his feet bolted to the floor, frozen there staring at them. They're brother and sister, and his dick is inside her, they're naked together, her bare breasts against his chest. Two puncture wounds are oozing dark blood from her neck, and the brother keeps licking at them, sucking, his mouth a bloody horror. Nick's stomach lurches horribly, and for a second he thinks he's going to be sick.

He desperately tries to push it down, get it together. It's not like it's the first time he's seen vampires having sex -- he should just stake the two of them while they're preoccupied like every other time he's done this, keep it businesslike, but he can't seem to move. Her brother's fucking her. She let him turn her into a vampire and then let him fuck her, felt the fat press of his dick shoving into her, and it's her _brother_.

The girl catches a glimpse of him over her brother's shoulder, her hips undulating, and she smirks, a dark, amused look. She nudges her brother, pointing with her chin, and he looks too. Nick can see the girl's naked breasts, her bare legs wrapped around her brother's waist. They laugh.

The sound somehow makes Nick's feet come loose, like it's broken the spell -- instead of being stuck to the spot, he desperately needs to get away. He can't kill them, he just can't, and he darts for the front door, trying to get back out into the sunlight, out of this foul, decaying darkness. He can't breathe.

He stumbles over a broken paving stone in the overgrown yard, just barely catching his balance and keeping himself from falling. The sun's bright out here, making him blink; the air smells impossibly fresh, and he's suddenly aware that he really is going to puke. He throws up into an unkempt hydrangea bush, retching once, twice. He keeps heaving long after he's gotten rid of everything in his stomach, until it's just bile coming up and his eyes are watering. Just, fuck. He can't think about what he just saw, doesn't want to, doesn't want to remember. It's not anything, it's just vampires, they do stuff like that, they just do, God, stop thinking about it.

When he finally gets his stomach under control, he sits back in the path beaten down through the long grass, legs too shaky to quite stand yet. When he glances toward the house, the two vampires are standing there in the doorway, just far enough back that they're in the shadow, that the sun can't reach them. They didn't bother to put on any clothes, so they're standing there naked, watching him. The guy's still got an erection, is sliding his hand over it idly. The girl's body is pale, skin white and translucent, and her nipples look very pink, her breasts heavy and firm. Her throat has stopped bleeding, but her brother's mouth is still smeared red.

The guy smiles, stroking his dick. His eyes are dark in the shadows. "Why'd you take off, kid? Come back in here and we can all have some fun."

Nick has to clear his throat before he can talk, and when he does his voice is rough. "No, thanks."

"C'mon," the guy says, and he slings his other arm over his sister's shoulders. She leans into him, putting a hand on his bare stomach. Her breasts are pressing into his side. "She's a good fuck. Her pussy's wet as anything."

God, Nick's going to throw up again. "That's your sister," he manages to get out.

They both smile again, that dark, horrifying smile. "I know," the guy says, and his sister ducks her head, pressing her face into his neck. Nick sees her lick at where his pulse would be if he weren't dead.

Nick has to get out of here. He tries to pull himself together, get his feet under him, balance with his pack's weight on his back. When he's finally standing, he starts to back away. Somehow he can't quite stop looking at them.

As he moves backward, the girl says, "Boo, you're no fun."

No, Nick is no fun. "Don't worry," the guy says to his sister. "We'll go find him after sunset."

Fuck, Nick should kill them right now. He's got the advantage with the sun out, and it'd be better than waiting for an ambush later. But he just can't do it, can't seem to actually bring himself to kill somebody's brother, somebody's sister, no matter how sick they are, how inhuman. He doesn't want to think about why.

Anyway, he'll just travel as far as he can as fast as he can, keep walking all day and into the night, and they won't be able to catch him. He knows the type, they'll get bored, want to stay in Cincinnati instead of going on the road. It'll be fine.

Nick turns and walks away, turning north, leaving them behind. He can hear them yelling obscenities at him long after he turns the corner.

**

The next few days on the road he sleeps less and less, first because he's trying to get as much distance as he can between him and the Cincinnati vampires, and later because he keeps dreaming. He shouldn't be dreaming things when he's not even sleeping in a bed, when there are roots digging into his back, but after he saw those vampires it's like his subconscious can't stop spewing awfulness everywhere, bringing him back to that same dream over and over again, the torn-up bodies of his family, their staring dead eyes, the blood smeared on the walls, and in the middle of it... Joe, what happened with Joe. After awhile he's just avoiding closing his eyes, hunting for longer and longer, walking for longer and longer, pushing himself. When he takes a break, he'll read or sharpen his weapons, do anything to avoid falling asleep. He's so tired, his feet and legs ache constantly, he feels like he's always in some foggy exhausted twilight, can barely think straight, but he just can't face sleeping. It's bad enough to have to survive the worst thing that ever happened to you once, your brain shouldn't make you go through it over and over again. He can't keep going through it like this.

**

He tries to focus on the hunt, his job, what he's out here to do. The dreams are motivational, at least; every time he wakes up from one he wants to kill every vampire he can get his hands on, tear them all apart. He tries not to let that feeling make him reckless, though -- he sticks to his system, looking for any traces vampires have left behind until he can get on the trail of one, find out where it's hiding. When he's getting close, he'll usually leave his pack behind so he can hunt without it, light on his feet without his supplies. He's good at hiding his stuff by now, camouflaging it with mud, secreting it away in bushes so no one will find it while he's hunting.

A week after he leaves Cincinnati, he hides his stuff and spends almost the whole night hunting a vampire before he finally takes her down. It's a tough fight, and as exhausted and sleep-deprived as he is, he barely gets out of it alive and with all his limbs intact. But he finally gets a stake through her heart and cuts off her head with his machete, making sure she'll stay dead and he can get paid. He has to hold the bloody trophy by the hair as he trudges back to his stuff, the stump of the neck dripping the whole way.

He'd hidden his pack in a ditch by the side of the road, covered with leaves, and when he gets back it looks undisturbed, everything the same as when he left it, so that's good. He sets the head down on the gravel next to the ditch, wiping his hands off on his jeans as he starts to brush the leaves away, pull his backpack out from under the debris. But as he unearths the pack, something silver and loose rolls away, falling off the top of it. That's weird -- he doesn't have anything that fits that description, much less have it resting loose on top of his pack, so he digs around in the leaves where it rolled until he finds it.

It's a purity ring, tarnished silver.

Nick stares at it. He hasn't worn his in a long time -- he threw it away almost a year ago -- so he can't compare this one to his old one, make absolutely sure it's a matching pair. But he wore his for years, so he should know the shape of it. Should be able to recognize its brother. His dad bought three of them, all the same.

He turns sharply, looking all around him, heart pounding, searching for the source of the danger, for whoever left this here, but there's no sign of anyone, just trees, the crumbling highway empty of any movement. Dread is knotted in his belly, all his limbs tight, and the metal from the ring's cold on his palm. It was on his pack. Someone put it there.

Nothing's moving in the trees around him, and Joe's dead. He's dead he's dead he's dead.

As Nick stands there paralyzed, the sun comes up over the horizon, ruddy and swollen through the dank October cloud cover, reddish light glinting dully off the ring. The night's over, but he doesn't feel the relief he usually feels at sunrise.

But... on the other hand, maybe it was just a fan that put the ring there. Sometimes girls recognize him and this wouldn't be the first time fans have followed him, even outside of the cities, even when he's on the road. They probably just saw that he wasn't wearing his ring and thought he should have a new one. That's just, that's probably all it is. You can probably buy rings just like this any old place. It's probably just tarnished because it's from a pawn shop. He should just throw it away, because it's dumb, it doesn't mean anything, it's nothing.

Joe's dead. Nick saw it. Whoever put that ring there, it's not Joe.

He shoves the ring into his pocket anyway. He doesn't know what he's going to do with it, but he can't bring himself to throw it away. And he needs to buy some new clothes, ones he's not outgrowing, because his jeans are getting so tight that he can feel the outline of the ring digging into his thigh the whole day, a perfect circle, cold even through the fabric.

**

He sleeps uneasily the next day, waking up over and over even though he's lying in a patch of sunlight, where nothing dangerous can sneak up on him. He just keeps rolling over on the ring, so it digs into his hip and hurts him, until finally he has to take it out of his pocket and leave it on the ground next to him, inside the crook of his arm. Every time he wakes up he can see it there, tarnished dark even in the sunlight.

The last vampire he'd killed was part of a pair, so Nick knows he can probably kill the other one tonight, that it must be close by. So he leaves his pack again, this time hidden in a thick knot of bushes, where it's impossible to see unless you're right on top of it. He's restless, wants to kill something badly, and the hunt goes better tonight, Nick adrenalized and fierce, a practiced killing machine.

He's still high on the glow of it, the precision of the kill, the blood on his hands, as he heads back to his pack. But this time he sees something wrong before he gets up to it, two dark shapes resting on top of the bushes where his bag's hidden. He squints, looking around as he comes up on them, but no one's around. His heart rate's already picked up, and he approaches cautiously, hoping they're not, like, bombs or anything, but before he's very close he can see that they're two heads, placed there carefully, facing each other. Crap. Is this a threat or something?

When he gets right up to them, he can see the fangs, and even though he gets a mirror out of his pack to be totally sure, he doesn't really need to. They're vampires. But... vampire heads are _valuable_. No one would go to all the effort to kill vamps and decapitate them and then leave a thousand dollars worth of heads lying around accidentally. And even if they had, what are the odds that they'd accidentally end up on the bush holding Nick's pack, out of all the random bushes in Ohio?

Nick has the sinking suspicion that they're a gift, but... no. No, no, no, that's crazy. He can feel the ring in his pocket, pressing hard against his thigh, and fuck, that's crazy, just, oh, fuck.

There's just, there's no way it's what he's thinking. It's something else, something weird. Just -- oh, wait, the fans!

God, yeah, okay, it's probably just fans, wanting to give him stuff. Fans are weird like that -- before there were vampires, they always wanted to give him the randomest things, like, pictures they'd drawn of him or a dead baby shark in a jar, so... yeah, sure, maybe now they want to give him vampire heads. And purity rings. And... it's fans. It's not -- nothing's following him. It's nothing to worry about.

He's sure that's all it is. He's just, he's really, really sure.

**

That day he takes his heads, including the two new ones, to the Collections Office in Dayton, but he can't bring himself to spend the night inside the city. The dreams are bad enough as it is; he doesn't need to encourage them to get any worse by tempting fate and going to a hotel room. Especially when -- just, he just thinks maybe with the ring in his pocket they'd be worse. Even though it's just fans that gave it to him, even though he's sure of that. So instead he heads back out into the suburbs of Dayton outside the city walls, a place ripe for vampire nests.

Even exhausted as he is, he's still sharp while he's hunting. That night he tracks a group of vampires to a house in what used to be one of the nicer suburbs of Dayton, where the yards are pretty big and the houses are pretty far apart, where rich people used to live before the ones that survived had to move back to the inner city, white flight in reverse. Nick counted five vampires as they went inside; it's getting toward dawn, so they're hiding from the sunrise, ready to sleep the day out. But they weren't cutting it close at all -- it's still completely dark out, just barely a navy blue in the east, more than an hour before the sun actually comes up.

Nick's in a copse of trees across the street, hidden low to the ground and watching, trying to figure out what he wants to do. He could try to lure them out one by one, get the adrenaline rush of a good fight, get some clean kills. Or he could go into the house himself, be more likely to get stuck taking on all five at once. It'd be more exciting, more dangerous, so there's that, but it is risky. Or he could wimp out and just burn the whole house down, waiting outside to kill any if they manage to come staggering out. It's always annoying to burn vamps -- it makes their heads all charred and unrecognizable when you cut them off, so sometimes Collections will give you a hard time about paying out for them. Though on the other hand, the satisfaction of watching them writhe around on fire is pretty high.

Nick can see one of them moving through the darkened windows, so they haven't gone to sleep yet. Maybe luring them out is the way to go -- he slides a stake out of his belt, smooth and cool in his hand.

Then there's a familiar voice whispering out of the darkness behind him, "Nicky."

He jumps and spins on his heels, his heart giving a strange sideways lurch in his chest. He stares into the blackness, looking frantically around, listening so hard that when an owl hoots nearby he nearly jumps out of his skin. He can't see anything, can't hear anything else, but he just -- that was -- it can't be, but.... He stares at where the voice had come from, but there's nothing there, just the dark houses with their broken windows, scraggly yards with their grass high and unkempt, a rusting swingset, nothing moving anywhere.

The ring in his pocket is pressing tight against his leg, and after a second he hears the voice again, from another direction, more to his right. "Nick."

Nick starts again, spinning to look in the new direction, but he can't see anything at all, just blackness. Why is it such a dark night? His impulse is to say, "Joe?" but he doesn't want to give away his position, even if it sounds like Joe can already see him.

God, it can't be Joe, Joe's dead, it has to be someone else, but it just -- it sounds like -- oh God.

Nothing happens, but Nick can't just stay where he is, frozen in place. He starts to crawl away silently in the underbrush, making sure he's hidden, making sure nothing's going to jump out at him, torn between terror and longing. He feels like he's being watched, but God, he can't see or hear anything. It's unsettling. All his muscles are tight, shaking with adrenaline, and all he can hear is his heart thumping in his ears.

He moves to a better position, all his senses on high alert, but the voice doesn't come again. It takes Nick half an hour with no sign of anything to finally decide he must've imagined what he thought he heard. God. First he's seeing faces in crumpled up towels, and now he's imagining he's hearing things. He guesses if you're always listening for one voice every waking minute, maybe of course sometimes you'd think you'd heard it, especially after having all these dreams all the time, after seeing those vampires in Cincinnati, after being so sleep deprived. You think you hear a lot of things, out here hunting. It's nothing.

He's started shaking all over, though, his muscles tense. The sky's getting lighter, dawn's getting closer, and after all that, there's probably not time to lure the vampires out of the house. So fuck it. He's burning the place down.

It's not the first time he's done this, and it's not hard. Gasoline and old rags, strategically placed, and when it's all set he stands at one corner of the house and lights a match. It's bright in the darkness, yellow and dangerous, and he tosses it down, then moves to the next corner to do the same there. Once the whole house has started burning, low and smoldering, Nick moves back to a safe distance to keep an eye on the door, to wait to take care of them when they come stumbling out.

The house goes up beautifully, bright and flaming like a torch against the horizon, crackling loudly. Even as far back as he's standing, Nick can feel the heat of it on his hands and face, can feel the dark satisfaction of destroying something so thoroughly. Sometimes he wishes he could get his hands on some napalm.

A figure comes reeling out of the house, its clothes and hair on fire, beating at its back like it's trying to put itself out, like that's going to help. Wreathed in flame, like a human roman candle, though of course it's not human at all. Nick thinks about going up and staking it, putting it out of its misery, but then he thinks about his family and instead just watches it convulsing on the ground, listens to it screaming in agony. Yeah, sometimes he really likes his job.

**

He's spending most of his energy trying to convince himself that he imagined hearing Joe's voice, that it's nothing, but even so, he doesn't much want to spend the night outside the city again. Besides, he has five scorched vampire heads from that burning house to cash in, and he's still on the outskirts of Dayton, the walls right there, promising safety from the thing that might be following him, whispering his name in the darkness.

So he packs the burned heads into his bag and heads back to the city yet again, lining up outside the gates with everyone else who's waiting to get through the paperwork to get inside.

Cities are strange now that they've walled themselves in, just the downtown areas left for people to live in, crowded and close and gray with usually only foot traffic allowed inside the walls. Kids play foursquare in the street, teenagers hang around on stoops looking bored. Nick's their age, but he feels even less like one of them than he used to. Though in some ways maybe it's not that different -- he stopped going to regular school so he could work for a living before he hit puberty, and if he kills vampires now instead of playing guitar, well. The distance between him and the other kids his age is the same. Familiar.

He's heading over to Collections when he gets stopped on the street by a little girl who looks about ten, her mother hovering behind her. "You're Nick Jonas!" the little girl says, somehow recognizing him through the grime and soot of the past few days. "Will you take a picture with me?"

God, he hates this, but he's nice to little girls, so. "Sure," he says, smiling at her. He sets down his bag of heads to stand next to her, his arm around her, stakes strapped over his chest. Her mother takes the picture. The girl's beaming.

"Thanks so much," her mother says. She looks nervous. She knows what's in the bag, keeps looking at it sidelong.

The little girl hasn't noticed. She's looking all around the street behind him, like she's trying to find something. He knows what, but he's hoping she won't ask. "Where are Kevin and Joe?" she says. Crap.

No use beating around the bush. "They're dead," he says. It's not even hard to say -- it's not the first time he's said it. Or the second or the third or the tenth. He thinks uneasily about the thing that might be behind him, following him, but it doesn't change what he said. It's still true. They're still dead.

The little girl's face falls. "You're the Last Jonas Brother?" she says, stricken. The way she says it, it sounds like it should be capitalized, like he's the Last Unicorn. He almost laughs, it's so weird. He hadn't thought of it like that.

"I guess so," he says. "Sorry."

"Joe was my favorite," she says. Her lower lip is starting to quiver.

He almost says, "Mine too," but stops himself. He gives the mother an apologetic look and says, "Sorry," again instead. She just looks like she feels bad for him. "I, uh... need to get these to Collections, so...."

"Oh, of course," the mother says, and thank God, he can get away.

The Last Jonas Brother does errands the rest of the afternoon, Collections and going to the post office to mail his quarterly estimated tax return, and then finally goes to check in at a hotel, planning to drop off his stuff and clean up a little bit before he goes to get himself some dinner.

The sun's just starting to set, so the gates will be closing. Whatever's following Nick will be waking up soon. Nick wonders if it'll wait for him outside the city gates. He feels a little sick at the thought, but can't stop imagining it out there, even so. Creepy as it is, horrible as it is. He doesn't know what he's going to do when he goes back on the road.

Of course, on the other hand, he doesn't have to go back out there. He could just stay here inside the walls forever -- or if not here, stay in some other city forever. Nothing's making him be a hunter, spend nights outside, be out there with that thing following him. He could go wherever he wanted, do whatever he wanted, safe behind the walls -- go to Dallas, or LA, or New York. He could take buses from city to city, the day buses that never drive at night, one after another until he got where he wanted to go. Rejoin the human race. He'd definitely live longer, and it's not like he needs the money from hunting -- he's saved up a ton just from his kills, and that doesn't even count all the Jonas Brothers money that he's never touched, waiting there in accounts for him whenever he wants it. He could go to college. Get a job. Write songs again, even -- do anything he wants with that thing locked away from him, locked outside the city walls with the rest of the monsters.

Settling down's not something he's really thought about before, and it's odd to consider it. He tosses his stuff down in a corner of the empty hotel room and sits on the edge of the bed, feeling how soft it is. It could be any hotel room he's ever been in, a thick white comforter, a beige carpet, nothing distinctive on the walls. It's very quiet. He could live somewhere just like this. An empty room just like this.

He tries to listen to the silence for a minute, test it out, but it's not long before he can't take it anymore and flips on the TV just for background noise. TV is strange these days -- most cities don't have a lot of communication between them. Vampires tend to knock down telephone poles, cell towers, all kinds of connections between places, which means every city has become its own small empire, has taken on its own personality. There's usually a couple of channels of locally produced programming, the production values way down from what TV used to be like, and then the other channels generally just play DVDs, old shows or movies that the town already had.

He's about to flip to the local channels, see what Dayton's programs are like, but when the TV comes on it's already tuned to what must be the kids' channel. Most cities have them, and Nick usually makes a big effort not to look at them. This one's playing music videos, maybe between shows, and he recognizes the chords immediately, freezing. It's the start of Miley's "7 Things," and the music feels like it's tying his stomach into a knot. He can't even change the channel, can't seem to move.

Miley's looking right into the camera, right at him, singing about all the things she hates about him. He doesn't know where she is now, what happened to her. He never heard anything when things started going downhill, and after his family died, he stopped asking. She's probably dead too.

When he means it, she'll believe it. He remembers how at first this song was upsetting, then after awhile it was just kind of funny. He doesn't know what it is now. He can't feel anything. His stomach has turned acidic and sour, churning, and he watches the whole video, her with his dogtags, holding their picture up to the camera with his face covered up, the mop of hair he had when they were together still visible. It's a good song. Catchy. He always thought so, even back when it pissed him off.

When the video ends, an episode of _Wizards of Waverly Place_ starts, and he can't take any of this. He manages to turn the TV off, his hand shaking on the power button, and gets up to go wash his face and hands before dinner. He'd rather have the silence than that. The song's still pounding in his ears. _You're vain, your games, you're insecure._ His hair's too long in the mirror. After dinner he's going to cut it all off.

**

That night he can't sleep, even as exhausted as he is. He lies in the hotel bed for hours, staring at the ceiling, before he finally admits that it's pointless to even try. He's too used to being up all night hunting and then sleeping during the day to be able to turn that around all at once -- might as well be a vampire himself with that schedule. He feels all keyed up, his skin too tight, like he's a guitar string someone's tuning sharper and sharper, on the point of snapping.

But he doesn't want to risk turning the TV on again, and pacing the floor of the hotel room gets old pretty fast, so before long he's pulling his leather jacket back on and moodily leaving the room, heading down the stairs to the lobby. There's one girl still on duty at the desk, sallow under fluorescent lights. He doesn't know what people do at night in the cities -- he figures that even with the walls, they're probably too scared of vampires to go out at night, and in most places electricity can be pretty intermittent anyway. So he doesn't have a lot of hope when he asks her if there's anything to do at this hour, but she just looks at him funny, like it's a stupid question, and gives him the names of like three clubs off the top of her head.

"Those are twenty-one and over," she says, eyeing him. "Are you twenty-one?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm twenty-two," Nick says, trying to act offended. "And a half." You have to be twenty-one to be a hunter in the first place, so Nick's had a fake ID for a long time.

The girl looks at him. "Uh, right," she says, in this obnoxiously dubious tone of voice. "Sure." But then she gives him directions to one of the clubs, so whatever, who cares.

The club's kind of gross and run-down, like one of the places Nick and his brothers played a long, long time ago, back when he was thirteen and they were just starting out. It's dim and loud inside, the music pounding so hard he can feel the bass line in his chest, rumbling in his ribcage, and he'd forgotten what that felt like, how you can feel it in your body when the music's that loud. It used to be a professional hazard. The dancefloor's crowded with a mass of writhing bodies, and Nick's not used to being in such a crowd anymore -- it's disorienting, makes him feel kind of claustrophobic. Weird to see so many people after spending all his time in abandoned towns outside the cities, all those empty places with their silent, looted stores, burned-out cars along the highways, not a living soul in sight. When he's out on the road, he almost forgets there are other people still alive, that he's not the last human left.

At first he feels trapped, hemmed in by all the bodies, but after a few minutes, it starts to feel good, the heat of so many living people, the way the music is so loud there's no room for his own thoughts. He can see why people come here, how maybe they can drown everything out, and he's never really gotten drunk before but he thinks maybe tonight he wants to. Maybe that would help even more.

He doesn't know the names of any drinks, though -- the only one he can think of is a rum and coke, so he asks the bartender for a rum and diet coke, and when he tries it it's gross, but he keeps drinking it and then another one, listening to the music, and pretty soon he feels fuzzy-headed and good, like everything inside him has gotten muted and dim, tolerable for once. He hadn't even realized how bad he feels most of the time, but now it's like that dim horrible undercurrent of his mind, an undercurrent so taken for granted he doesn't even notice it anymore, is suddenly gone. He feels vaguely like he's had a headache for days and finally took an aspirin, and now keeps being surprised by the absence, the way if you lose a tooth your tongue keeps going back to the space it's left.

He's not really a dancer, so he just stands by the bar on the side of the dance floor, drinking one rum and diet coke after another and watching the people. But finally this girl comes over to him and asks him to dance. He really must be drunk, too, because he says yeah.

She's pretty, brown skin and long black hair, and she puts her hands on his shoulders and smiles at him, pulling him closer, so the stake on his belt must be digging into her hip. He took most of his weapons off before he left the hotel, but he didn't feel right going out without anything. As she puts his hands on her waist, she brushes up his arm, traces the scar there, the thick one that snakes up his forearm where a vampire had torn into him a long time ago.

Between the stake and the scars, it must be obvious that he's a hunter, and as she smiles at him wider, like that's attractive, it occurs to him that she's probably one of those people, the ones who think vampires are kind of romantic, like something out of Anne Rice or _Twilight_. Nick sees those people out on the road sometimes -- well, mostly, he sees them dead by the side of the road, but once in awhile there's a live one fucking a vampire, half-drained, all vacant-eyed and pathetic. This girl's in the city, so she must be one of the ones who's too smart to actually sleep with a vampire, but who thinks vampire hunters are the next best thing, somehow in the same category. Out wandering lonely in the night, killing things, or whatever, like Nick's the same as a monster.

Normally Nick finds those people maddening, but tonight he's drunk and she's really pretty and she's moving her hips against his, and he thinks, yeah. Yeah, maybe a lot of things can make you feel better. Maybe he should try some more of them. It's not like he's a virgin anymore, it's not like he has any reason to hold back. He's always wondered what it'd be like to sleep with a girl anyway, and maybe he should just do it already, get it over with, be a person. See if he could actually be able to be with someone, touch someone again. He thinks maybe he could. She pulls him closer and he really thinks maybe he could.

**

She takes him back to her apartment, a tiny messy one, just a studio with a bed in the corner and a futon for a couch. The shape of the room gives the impression that it used to be part of a bigger apartment that was divided into smaller pieces. In the few seconds between coming through the door and her drawing him down to the bed, Nick thinks they must've split apartments up like that after they walled in the downtown, so there'd be enough places for people to live. He doesn't really know, though, this is the first apartment like this he's ever been in -- it's not like he's a guest in people's homes all the time.

But then she's kissing him before he has much more time to think, her lips warm and dry against his, and he hasn't kissed anyone in a long time. She's a good kisser. He breathes through his nose and tries not to think about anything but her, tries to keep everything else at bay.

She sighs and leans into him with her body, and he lets his hand move to her shoulder, lets his thumb brush the bare skin above her collar. She opens her mouth and he slides his tongue along her bottom lip, and he's -- it's strange, it just feels strange and he's sort of feeling a little extra light-headed and weird, beyond what the alcohol had done to him, his heart starting to pound. But it's just a girl, he's just kissing a girl, there's nothing to freak out about. He's okay. This is normal.

He encourages her to get closer, straddle his lap, and she does, swinging a leg over him, all warm and alive in his lap. She's right on his crotch, moving a little bit, so he should be getting hard, but he's mostly just feeling anxious and unsettled, his dick not cooperating at all. He slides a hand up over her shirt to cover one breast, feel the curve of it in his hand, and that should be helping, especially when she makes a little sound in the back of her throat, her nipple hardening, but there's still nothing happening -- it's starting to get a little embarrassing how he's not hard at all. He just -- his stomach's churning and he's never felt this awful while kissing a girl, never felt like this with Miley or Selena, never felt so much like he wants to throw up and get away. He likes her, she's pretty, what's wrong with him?

She pulls back slightly, leaning her forehead against his, her breathing coming a little heavy, and scoots back, starting to work the button of his fly, and suddenly he's panicking, heart about to pound out of his chest. It's like he can smell the blood from that hotel room a year ago, can taste iron in his mouth, and her hand just barely slips under the hem of his t-shirt as she's trying to undo the button, just touches his bare skin for a second, for heaven's sake, but he feels like he's about to hyperventilate. God, he wants to stop this, he wants to go home, it's all he can do not to start screaming or crying or something awful, claw his way out of his skin, but he can't freak out at something so stupid, oh God, he needs to get it together.

She falters on the button and looks up at him, leaning back so she can see him. "Hey," she says. She looks kind of worried. "Um, are you okay?"

God, this is so embarrassing. He tries to breathe like normal, get his heart to slow down, swallowing. "Yeah," he says, trying to keep his voice even, trying to sound normal. "Yeah, I'm fine."

He must not have been that convincing, though, because her forehead just creases more. "Um, you're kind of, like, shaking or something," she says. She's looking at his hand.

"No, I'm not," Nick says automatically, but when he looks at his hand on her side it sort of is. Oh God, he feels all frantic and weird and the more he tries to stop his hand from shaking the more it shakes. "Oh," he says, trying to think how to laugh it off, how to explain it without saying he's having a nervous breakdown. Crap, he doesn't know what to do. "Uh... I don't know, maybe my blood sugar's a little low or something. I, uh, have diabetes."

God, this is awkward. He has to get up and go to his jacket to get the stuff to check his levels because, well, maybe it is. He hopes to God he's just having an insulin problem, not actually losing his mind. The girl sits there watching him, her hands in her lap, her shirt rumpled from where he was touching her breast.

The testing feels like it takes forever, way longer than usual, but when he finally gets the readout, his levels are normal. "Uh, nope," he says slowly. "They're fine. I just, uh..." He doesn't really know what to say, so lets himself trail off. She has a weird look on her face, and he should really just push through whatever this is, reach out for her again, make himself be okay with this, but even the thought of doing that makes him feel all agitated and freaked out -- thinking about her touching him, about being naked, about her touching his cock, about anyone touching him like that. His stomach's churning and he feels like he might puke, and he just, he needs to get out of here.

The girl looks pretty worried. "Um, seriously, are you...?" she says. She rubs the back of her neck awkwardly as she trails off. "I mean, you're, like, white as a sheet."

Nick starts shoving the testing stuff back into his jacket pockets, trying not to act as hysterical as he feels. His hands are shaking. He should give her some kind of explanation before freaking out and taking off, but he can't think of one and just, he needs to leave. "I have to go," he mumbles, getting everything stowed and then trying to pull his jacket on too fast, so he gets briefly caught in one sleeve.

"Hey," she says, and puts her hand on his arm for a second, probably just trying to be reassuring, but he jerks away much too violently, feeling like he's about to lose it.

She blinks, eyes wide and hurt for a split second before she tidies the pain away again, her face going still and controlled.

"Sorry," he says. "Sorry, it's not -- you're great -- I mean, I just --" He's getting all tangled up in his words now. "Sorry," he finally mutters, and he's crashing out the door, down the stairs, out into the cold night air, gasping great deep breaths so frigid they hurt his lungs. He's shuddering all over, breathing too fast, and he has to put his hands down on his knees, bend and try to keep from fainting or something even more embarrassing. God. And he thought he could be normal for at least one night, thought maybe sex would help.

So much for that idea.

**

Nick always tries to forget this one conversation he and Joe had before Joe died, back when they were still on tour and people were still desperately trying to be normal, when #vampireflu was a trending topic on twitter in between #weloveubieber and #followfriday. Before they'd lost Rob Hoffman in Atlanta.

They'd just played a half-full arena show where the whole audience had looked nervous, scattered through the empty seats, the music echoing back to the stage hollowly. Nick hadn't known if the other half of the ticket-holders were all dead or if they were too scared to come out, but either way it was bad -- it was all they could do to keep their energy up for the show, act like everything was okay, that everyone was having fun.

At the hotel afterward, Joe had come to Nick's room and lain on his back on Nick's bed, his head dangling off the edge so he was looking at Nick upside down. His crucifix was nestled in the hollow of his throat, glinting a little, so it must've been after Kevin'd had that scare, the one that had made their dad cave and get protective stuff for all of them. They were Assemblies of God, so wearing crucifixes made them all uncomfortable, like they might start worshiping Mary next, but their dad had apparently decided he'd rather have them alive and a little uncomfortable than otherwise.

"What would you do first, if you got turned?" Joe had asked. There was garlic at all the windows and over the door. It smelled.

"What?" Nick said. He was still hyped up from the show, all his muscles buzzing. He felt like practicing some flips, but after they had broken the floor at that one hotel they'd stopped doing that so much. Instead Nick slumped into one of the hotel room chairs and tried to be still.

"Oh, c'mon," Joe said. "Don't pretend you haven't thought about it."

Nick really hadn't thought about it, though. "Uh, I don't know," he said. "I'd be dead, so what does it matter?" Joe might as well have asked him what he planned on doing at his own funeral. Uh, getting buried? There aren't a lot of options there, Joe.

"You wouldn't be dead," Joe said. "You'd be _immortal_."

"Yeah, the demon in your body would be, not you," Nick said. "No, thanks."

Joe rolled his eyes. "Demon. Yeah, okay."

Whatever, so it was their dad that said the whole vampire thing was demon possession, but he did have the weight of Eastern European folklore behind him, if not the government epidemiologists. Besides, at that point Nick had actually seen someone who'd been turned -- just once, but up close. And it wasn't really... a person, somehow. Nick could just tell. He gave Joe a look. "Fine, genius. What would you do first if _you_ got turned?"

"Go find Taylor," Joe had said promptly, with some degree of satisfaction. "Rip her throat out. That's the thing, right, because you'd be immortal _and_ you'd have no conscience. It'd be awesome."

It had made Nick feel so taken aback. Not having a conscience really did not sound appealing, but there was Joe, acting like it would be just fantastic to be able to kill dumb old harmless Taylor Swift and not feel any remorse.

At the time, Nick had figured that Joe was probably just kidding around, though. "Yeah, sure," Nick had said, rolling his eyes. "Super awesome."

"Seriously," Joe said. His face looked funny upside down, like his mouth was moving all wrong. Foreign, somehow. "You could do all the things that you want to do but feel too bad about. It'd be, like, all freeing." He was giving Nick an odd look, appraising and dark. He looked like he had a long list of things he wanted to do if he lost his conscience. Like Nick was involved in some of them.

Nick couldn't even think of one thing he wanted to do that badly that his conscience stopped him from. Just sex, maybe. Joe was watching him with this strange look in his eye Nick didn't quite understand, that afterward... well, he doesn't like to think about it. Vampires aren't the same as the people they were before. They're not. So it doesn't matter. Joe hadn't wanted that, back then. "I guess," Nick had said, and changed the subject.

After Nick's family got killed, Taylor had gone missing too. So. Nick tries as hard as he can not to think about that conversation.

**

He leaves the city after just the one night, his great experiment in normality having gone horribly awry. He doesn't know why he thought he could stay there, doesn't know why he thought he could ever belong in a city anymore. Stupid. He straps his stakes more firmly across his chest, his pack on his back, and goes out to hunt. Whatever's out there... well, Nick will just have to deal with it.

He doesn't leave his pack anywhere, though -- he just doesn't need any more surprises left waiting for him, even if it's annoying to have to carry all his stuff with him the whole night. But he's not on the trail of anything in particular anyway, and spends most of the night looking for any traces that vampires have left behind without a lot of luck.

Around three in the morning, thunder starts rumbling in the distance and the wind picks up. Great. It's getting toward November, cold at night, and Nick hates it when it rains. Especially a cold, miserable autumn rain, one that gets into your bones, damp in your joints. The wind already smells like water, brown tattered leaves getting flung off the trees around him.

He's just heading into some tiny deserted one-stoplight town when the storm finally reaches him. A drop hits him on the back of the hand, then square on the top of his head, and then it's abruptly a downpour. He's going to get soaked in under a minute if he doesn't hurry, and when you've only got two sets of clothes and no time to let them dry, that's no joke. He sprints for the closest abandoned house.

It takes him a minute to bang the door open, getting wetter the whole time, but then he's through, into the musty interior of the shotgun house. It's always weird, being in people's houses after they've abandoned them or gotten killed or whatever. Their family pictures on the walls, their furniture pointed at a blank TV plugged into a dead wall socket.

He hates trying to hide out in houses like this while it's still dark outside and anything can get in. Vampires can't get into your house unless they're invited, but if it's not your house, if it's no one's house, everything's fair game. Sometimes he sleeps in houses during the day anyway, but that's because he knows that with the sun out, no vampires can get up to the door. At night it's just dangerous. But it's okay -- he just has to stay up and guard the door for a couple more hours until the sun comes up, and then when he knows he's alone, he can sleep.

He searches the house to make sure it's empty, then settles down on the couch, which at least is in pretty good shape, considering. His joints creak as he sits, and he runs a hand through his drenched hair, trying to get it out of his eyes. He's starting to shiver in his wet clothes, the cold of the rain getting to him, but he'll wait until it's sunlight to change out of them, until he knows he's safe. At least the couch has a view of the door. He takes his machete out and sets it on his knee and settles down to watch.

**

He jerks awake a few hours later. It's still dark in the room because the curtains are drawn, but he thinks it might be after sunrise. Crap. He's barely slept in weeks, so it's understandable, but God, he can't afford to just fall asleep when he's supposed to be watching. That's how people end up dead.

He rubs at one bleary eye, trying to wake up. In the corner, what must be a piece of furniture looks strange, the shadows falling funny. Almost like a person, sitting over there. Like a particular person. The white blotch like a face, dark hair falling over the forehead. God, Nick really has to stop imagining he sees him in random shadows. Joe's gone. He needs to get his head around it.

The shadows move. "Nick," says the thing in the corner.

Nick doesn't know if he actually yells or if it's just a silent, frozen, terrified scream in his head, but the next thing he knows he's scrambling for the front door, hoping to God that the sun's actually up, almost tripping over his own feet in his hurry. He skids out the door and just about falls down the front steps, scraping his knee up as he staggers, trying to catch his balance, falling in the yard.

It's daylight but still raining, heavy oppressive clouds keeping it pretty dark out for the sun being up. The rain's cold as it spatters Nick's shoulders and head, making him start to shiver, and the grass he landed on is wet, soaking through his jeans. When Nick looks back towards the house, Joe's followed him to the doorway but stopped there in the shadow, not venturing out into the dim sunlight of the yard. Obviously.

Joe's movements are just a little off somehow -- a little more graceful, more sinuous than when Joe was alive. Almost not anything Nick can put his finger on; there's just a smooth strangeness to them, something not quite right. But the expression on his face is so familiar, just the same look Joe always got when his feelings were hurt, and now that he's standing still he looks just like Nick's brother, his pale features more familiar than Nick's own.

"Nick," the vampire says. "Why did you run?" It sounds just like Joe, honestly confused and hurt, like it doesn't know why Nick would do that, like it's just Nick's brother, like there's nothing wrong with it at all. Why -- what did it think Nick was going to do?

Nick fumbles for his crucifix and pulls it over his head, holding it out toward Joe, warding him off. His hand's shaking.

Joe winces as Nick thrusts the crucifix toward him, turning his face away. "Nick," he says, his voice pained. "Stop it. Why are you being like this?"

Nick opens his mouth to talk, but no sound comes out. He has to clear his throat. "You're a vampire," he says.

"I'm Joe," Joe's body says. "Nick, I can't believe I found you. I've been looking for you all year."

Nick's clutching his crucifix so hard that the edges are digging into his hand. "I kill vampires," he says.

Joe looks at him, his eyes so black and focused on Nick, and he says, "I know. You're good at it, too. I've been watching."

Fuck, he's been watching. Of course he has. Nick's known he was behind him for a long time. He just didn't want him to be.

"Did you get my presents?" Joe asks.

Nick's going to be sick, the way Joe's looking at him, all hope and... well. Looking at him the same way he did that night, when Nick came back to the hotel suite to find blood everywhere, bodies thrown around like discarded dolls, Kevin and Joe in the middle of it, their teeth a little too sharp, their skin a little too pale. The two of them soaked in blood, gleeful and grinning and expecting Nick to join them. Playing catch with one of Frankie's fingers. "Go away," Nick whispers. He's getting soaked through by the rain, sprawled here in the damp grass, hair plastered to his forehead. He wipes water out of his eyes with the hand not clutching the cross.

Joe's totally dry, standing in the doorway. "Nick," he starts, but then seems to get distracted, staring at Nick's leg. Nick looks down reflexively, trying to see what Joe's looking at, and sees that his jeans got ripped when he fell coming out of the house. His knee's dripping blood. Joe stares at the vivid red drops oozing down Nick's leg, blood all watery and bright from the rain.

Nick makes a disgusted noise and Joe's eyes flick back up to Nick's face, for just a second panicked and ashamed. "Oh, you like that?" Nick says, suddenly aggressive, wanting to lash out at him, trying desperately to force the images of Joe and that hotel room out of his mind. Joe's bloody mouth, their dead parents. "You want to feed on me like you're an animal?"

Joe stands unnaturally still, looking at Nick evenly with his creepy black vampire eyes, all hint of shame gone. "It's not like that," he says.

"Oh, it's not?" Nick says. "How many humans have you murdered?"

Joe's still just looking at him, expressionless and unmoving. "I don't know," he says. "How many vampires have _you_?"

Nick shifts uneasily. "That's not the same," he says.

The lack of expression on Joe's face is making Nick more frightened than if Joe were yelling at him, threatening him. "I remember what you did to Kevin," Joe says. "If I hadn't been there would you have cut off his head like all the rest of them?"

Nick starts to get to his feet, slipping a little in the mud so one knee goes down in it, squelching. He catches himself with one hand on the grass. "That wasn't Kevin," he says. It had been obvious that the demon in Kevin's body wasn't really him -- when Nick had refused to let them turn him, Kevin had snarled at Nick, come at him to hurt him. The real Kevin wouldn't do that. Nick didn't stake _Kevin_.

"It was too," Joe says. "We were going to all be together, the three of us."

Nick's unbalanced by his pack on his back so it's hard for him to straighten up but he finally manages it, his feet underneath him. He's soaked with rain and covered in mud and blood, his wet jeans chafing his skin. Somewhere in the distance thunder rumbles, low and rolling.

Joe hasn't taken his eyes off him. "We could still be together," Joe says. "You and me, anyway. Even better, just you and me."

Nick shakes his head, swallowing. The crucifix is biting into his hand, the ridges of Jesus' body hurting him, he's holding on so tight. He can't seem to make his hand relax. "No," he says. He doesn't want to be turned -- you have to let them turn you, you have to cooperate, drink their blood, and Nick's never going to do that. He said no a year ago and he's saying no now.

"C'mon, Nick," Joe says, and he smiles a slow, terrifying smile, so Nick can see his sharp incisors, very white under his red, red lips. "Whoever drinks of my blood will have eternal life."

Nick shudders a little at the twisted Bible verse. "I don't want to be a perverted killer, thanks," he says. Lightning flashes to his left, and he turns his head to look at where it was. The air feels charged; he can smell ozone.

"Perverted," Joe says, his forehead furrowing like he's genuinely confused as to why Nick would say that. "What? Oh, that. That wasn't _perverted_. I love you."

"You're my brother," Nick says. The thunder hits then, a clap of it. He should've counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder, figured out how far away it had struck. "It was sick."

"But you liked it," Joe says.

" _No_!" Nick finally loses his temper and yells. "I didn't, okay? I didn't!"

"But you stayed--" Joe starts to say, still all bewildered, and how can he possibly be confused about that?

"Shut up, Joe!" Nick says, and he's backing up as fast as he can, trying to get away, hoping Joe won't try to follow him. Hoping that even the dim sunlight will keep him safe.

"Nick!" Joe calls after him. He's not following, but he looks so sad, standing there in the doorway. Nick turns around and starts to jog away, not looking at him. It's not his brother. It's not. "Nicky!"

The rain is cold and Nick's soaked through, shivering, and he falls into a fast walk, moving as quickly as he can, shuddering all over, trying not to think about Joe back there, wanting him to stay. He's shaking and he can't catch his breath, and he can't stop remembering things he never wanted to remember, never wanted to think about again.

It's hard to walk for a lot of reasons and finally Nick has to stop in an abandoned house to just jerk off and get it over with already so he can move faster, since apparently his hard-on isn't going away on its own. Just, fuck, he's so fucked up, and he jerks off in some dead family's living room, hard and fast and desperate, trying as hard as he can not to think about how hot and sticky the blood had been all over Joe's body, about Joe dropping to his knees in a puddle of it, how Nick could see bodies out of the corner of his eye the whole time, how he could see his dad's severed foot while Joe's mouth was.... God, no, he's not thinking about it, not thinking about how Joe was so much stronger than Nick, how Nick couldn't get away. How Nick had to stay all night, pretending he liked it to keep Joe from killing him like he'd killed everyone else, how Joe had... but no, he's not thinking about it, he's not, he's not, nothing else happened, nothing, nothing, it was a long time ago, he's fine, and when he comes he's thinking about nothing at all, nothing.

**

Nick keeps walking all morning and into the afternoon, trying to lose himself in putting one foot after the other, putting as much space between him and Joe as he can, though he doesn't know what he thinks the point is. He walks until he's swaying with exhaustion, but it isn't until he sees a cemetery, consecrated ground, that he lets himself stop. He'll be safe sleeping there, even if he accidentally oversleeps till it's dark.

He knows Joe's still behind him, but he's reached a strange, light-headed calm after his panic earlier. By now he's so tired and wrung out he can't even feel frantic anymore, can't feel anything but an odd numbness, still and centered like nothing can touch him.

He finds some gravestones that he likes in the middle of the cemetery. It's a family, parents and two children, and they're friendly headstones somehow, quiet and steady. He wouldn't mind sleeping here. He slings his pack down onto the grass and then lies down on one of the graves, so the stone is at his head and his body stretches out where the coffin must be, buried underneath him. His clothes are still damp from the rain earlier, but holding still like this, out of the breeze, he's not as cold as he was.

For the first time in a long time, he thinks about his family, how maybe they're buried in a cemetery just like this one, quiet under the earth. For the first time he thinks maybe it's peaceful, maybe a relief to just lie still, not to have anything to worry about anymore. When he saw they were dead he ran, didn't stick around to see them sewn back together by a coroner, put in coffins and under the earth. He just saw the bloody room they were torn apart in, the agony of it. But maybe it wasn't so bad for them. Maybe it's not so bad now.

He's the Last Jonas Brother. Everyone else in the family is either dead or undead, and Nick's been running from that all year, pretending that he could escape from it, pretending that those two states of being aren't the only two real options left for him. This whole year has been an interlude, but death's been behind him this whole time, following him, born in that same bloody room Nick-the-vampire-hunter was born in, and he can't escape it much longer. It's going to find him again, probably tonight, when the sun goes down. He feels strangely calm knowing it's the end of the line, that this is the last time he'll sleep in this strange in-between life he's been living this year, that this can't go on any longer. It's over, it's all going to be over.

The earth under his back is warm and soft, comforting somehow, and below him there are bones, and the stone by his head shadows his face. He sleeps.

**

When he wakes up it's dark, just like he was afraid of -- he slept through sunset. Some leaves have drifted down onto him while he was asleep, and he brushes them off, sitting up groggily. He can see dark shapes moving outside the boundaries of the churchyard, a lot of them, though none of them look like Joe. He's usually careful not to let vampires find him like this, not to be the one taken unaware; normally the lapse would bother him, but today he can't seem to feel anything about it at all.

So here he is, at the end. Maybe he'd rather go down fighting before Joe gets here anyway, not have to deal with whatever will happen then.

"Hey, baby boy," one of the vampires calls from outside the gates in a breathy, seductive voice, obviously trying to be creepy. "Aren't you going to come out and play?"

He really hates it when they think they're in a horror movie. "Yeah, in a minute," he says tiredly, getting to his feet and stretching as he yawns hugely. He tries to count how many of them there are, but they keep moving back and forth, just shadows in the darkness, and he loses track at eight.

That's way too many for Nick to try to take on by himself -- if he were smart, he'd just stay on the consecrated ground until morning, stay safe. But what does it matter now? Joe's coming for him anyway. It's all over.

So before he can talk himself out of it, he leaves his pack next to the grave he was sleeping on, takes a stake out of his belt, and barrels out of the churchyard into the crowd of them.

He manages to stake one before they quite realize what's going on, its pale body falling at his feet, but then the rest of them have seen him and the tide turns pretty quickly. He's so outmatched one of them laughs. He's fought his way out of some pretty bad odds before, and he's hitting out at them fiercely, but before long he's been shoved to the ground, one of them holding his arms, another holding his legs, and a third sinking its teeth into his throat.

He's been bitten before, but only glancingly -- but even then, it was a disturbing sensation, how somehow the teeth tearing into your skin go right to your groin, make you feel hot all over, distressingly turned on. And this is ten times more intense than a glancing bite, the vampire's teeth penetrating deep, its tongue lapping at his skin, sucking his blood down. Its mouth is cool and wet and his blood is hot as it pours out of his artery, and Nick's somehow so, so hard, dick straining against his fly, the pressure of the fabric making him even harder, the roughness of it, how the denim rubs against him every time Nick shifts.

He must be bleeding out really fast, because he's all bleary and light-headed almost immediately, like he's disconnected from his body. He tries to keep struggling, but his muscles have gone weak and the arms holding him down are strong, unrelenting.

 _I'm going to die,_ he thinks. He's been so close to death so many times, in danger every day but always making it through -- it makes it hard to believe that he's actually going to die now, after all the times he's survived. Somehow such a surprise that he's going to join his parents and not Joe.

He wonders what it'll feel like, if it'll be like falling asleep. If he'll see a bright light, a tunnel, if his family will be waiting at the end of it, if Frankie and Kevin will be there. As he's wondering he stops feeling hot all over and feels cold instead, starts shivering. He's getting goosebumps and he squirms, but the hands all over his body get tighter, holding him still. The mouth is still lapping at his throat, still keeping his cock hard, but it's starting to feel farther away, like even his arousal's happening to someone else, and he lets his eyes flutter closed. He's just so tired...

There's some commotion very far away, people yelling and thumping and the hands holding him down go away, and there's no mouth at his neck anymore, and Nick whimpers a little bit in protest. It's just, that was feeling good, why would they stop? He wants the mouth to come back, touch his skin again, that tongue teasing him. He needs to come, he's so hard, he needs to finish.

"Nick," someone says, close by his ear. They shake his shoulder, but Nick's tired, he doesn't want to get up.

"Go 'way," Nick mutters. Mom should just leave him alone, he doesn't want to go to school today. He tries to put his hand up to cover his eyes, block out the morning, but his hand doesn't seem to want to move. Well, whatever.

"Nick, wake up," the someone says. It sounds like Joe -- go away, Joe, waking Nick up isn't your job. If school's so important Mom can wake him up.

"No," Nick mumbles.

"You're bleeding," Joe says, but Nick's drifting off, going to sleep. Then there's a mouth at his neck again, licking at his skin. But this time instead of licking the punctures open, it seems to be licking them closed. Other than that, it feels the same, though, pulling at his cock, and Nick's hips jerk forward.

"Shhh," Joe says. Nick's lost in a fog, vision blurry when he blinks his eyes open, and God, he's so hard, all uncomfortable and turned on. He whines a little bit, pushing his hips forward again, and this time he's rewarded with some contact, pressure on his cock. "There you go," Joe murmurs, and that mouth is still licking at his neck, and now a hand is pushing at his groin, giving him some friction, fumbling at his fly.

"Please," Nick murmurs, and the hand's snaking into his boxers, closing coolly around his dick, and he feels hot all over, hot and desperate and everything's out of focus, and all he can think about is his cock, how badly he needs to get off.

"It's okay, Nicky," Joe says. "'S okay, just relax."

The mouth moves from Nick's neck, stops licking him, and Nick would complain, but the hand's moving on his dick, pulling on him hard, and he's groaning and shoving up into the tight grip, needing to come so badly, he's so hard and he can't think at all, and then someone's settling between his legs, hands on his hips. A cool wet mouth closes around the tip of his cock, so tight and smooth and Nick gasps, accidentally thrusting up into it all bleary-eyed and desperate, so his cock slides deeper into that tight wetness, and the mouth just opens wider and sucks, hard, and Nick starts coming before he even realizes he's close, shooting off into the back of whoever's throat, coming so hard he feels it in his ass, up his spine, so his vision blurs even more, going black at the edges.

"That's right, Nick," Joe says, somewhere far away as Nick gasps for breath, and somehow Nick doesn't remember very much more after that.

**

Someone's propping Nick up in bed, holding something cool to his lips. "C'mon, Nick," a voice says. It sounds far away. "You lost a lot of blood, you gotta drink something." Nick tries to talk, but just makes a weird croaking noise, and then the cup at his mouth tips. He sips water reflexively.

At the first swallow he realizes he's thirsty and starts drinking fast, gulping until the water starts going down the wrong way and he breaks off to cough, sputtering. Cool hands rub at his back. "Okay, it's okay," the voice says, but they must be behind him, because when he makes the enormous effort of opening his eyes, he can't see anyone. He dimly takes in that he's in a strange bedroom, dark with the curtains drawn, before his eyelids get too heavy again and he lets them close.

**

It's still dark the next time he wakes up. Or dark again. He doesn't know how much time has gone by. The room smells musty and shut-up, and Nick's naked under the scratchy sheets, so someone must have undressed him. He can see his shirt and jeans hanging over a chair, like they're drying out from the rain earlier. Nick shifts, rolling over onto his side in the bed, and across the room his dead brother's sitting on the floor looking at him, leaning back against the wall with his elbows on his knees.

As Nick moves, Joe's eyes flick toward him, but he doesn't get up, just sits there looking.

Nick wonders if he's dead now, a vampire. His neck hurts where he was bitten and he's ravenously thirsty, and those vampires were draining him before. Maybe this is how Joe felt when he got turned. Maybe Nick and Joe are finally the same again after all.

"Am I dead?" Nick asks. His voice comes out rough, and he has to clear his throat.

Joe looks at him for a long moment, his eyes shadowed, his skin empty-pale. "Nope," he says after awhile.

Nick doesn't know whether to believe him or not. But he feels weak all over, muscles limp, so even if he's not dead, it's not like he's going to be able to put up a fight. Joe's caught him either way. Game over. Nick lost.

Joe's still sitting on the floor watching him, the silence stretching out. Finally Joe says, "How do you feel?"

Nick swallows dryly. He doesn't know whether to admit how much he needs a drink of water or if it'd be bad to show weakness. Well, it's not like Joe isn't going to kill him anyway. "Thirsty," Nick says.

Joe nods and pushes himself to his feet, all vampire-sinewy and graceful. He leaves the room and comes back a few minutes later holding a bottle of water in one hand. Nick sits up against the pillows, and Joe comes and sits down on the edge of the bed next to him, handing him the water and watching as Nick drinks it. He's sitting so close that his hip is nudging Nick's side.

Seeing Joe this close up is weird. His skin's so white it's almost translucent, like Nick might be able to see through him in a strong enough light. He's holding very still, more still than Nick's ever seen Joe sit, maybe more still than Nick's ever seen anybody sit, and he's beautiful, more beautiful than Nick remembers, his skin smooth and unmarked, his muscles more defined than when he was alive. It's strange and unsettling to see him looking so much like Nick's brother and so inhuman at the same time, his eyes flat and dark, deep circles under them like he hasn't eaten for awhile. Nick feels his pulse pick up as he notices Joe staring at his neck, and he imagines Joe can see the rhythm under his skin, can hear the fast thumping of his heart. Joe's eyes are fixed there, on his throat.

Nick braces himself, ready for Joe to bite him, but it doesn't happen, and it doesn't happen, and Nick's getting more and more tense and frightened, waiting for Joe to do it, for his teeth to suddenly sink into Nick's neck. Nick can't stand it -- he wishes Joe would do it already, get it over with.

Nick almost jumps out of his skin when instead Joe's hand comes down on his bare knee, where it's crooked out from under the sheet. Joe's skin is cool, not like a human hand at all, and when Nick flinches, Joe says, "Hey," in a soft, soothing voice. "Shh. It's okay." Joe's hand is pale against Nick's knee, and Joe's moving his thumb gently against Nick's skin, petting him. Nick tries to settle down, but the harder he tries to hold still the more he shakes, until he's trembling all over, hating himself for doing it all the while. Him and Joe and a bed, Joe touching him -- it's every nightmare he's had for the past year, repeating in reality. He almost expects Joe's skin to be sticky and hot with their family's blood.

Nick can't take this anymore. He deliberately tilts his head, baring his throat to Joe, leaving that artery open for him. "Do it already," he says through gritted teeth. His voice only shakes a little. "Get it over with."

Joe looks at him for a second, blinking, an expression on his face that Nick can't read. Nick used to be able to read all of Joe's expressions, but this new Joe, this non-Joe... he doesn't know what this Joe's thinking, staring at him like that. But then after a long moment Joe must figure that he might as well, because he's leaning in, moving into Nick's space excruciatingly slowly. Nick does his best to hold his ground, and he closes his eyes, willing himself not to freak out, to let it happen with some dignity, gritting his teeth as he waits for the deep penetration of Joe's fangs into his aching neck, into the bruised punctures already there. Joe comes closer and closer and then his lips touch Nick's neck, cool and hard and alien. His teeth settle against Nick's skin for a second, just resting there, light pressure not breaking through. Nick braces himself for the sharp punch of the fangs, but it doesn't come -- instead the teeth go away and there's just the cold smoothness of Joe's tongue, licking over Nick's skin, and Joe's not biting him. He's kissing him.

"Come on," Nick says, his voice coming out high and hysterical. What's Joe doing? "Bite me. That's what you caught me for, right? Kill me already."

Joe mouths at Nick's neck for a second longer, kissing along his throat, and then Nick hears him inhale deeply, like he's _smelling_ Nick or something, and this is so much more fucked-up than Joe killing him. Nick's hands are clenched tight into fists and he can't relax them. "Why would I want to kill you?" Joe says softly, his breath on Nick's neck, his voice husky and low. "I just saved you." He goes back to kissing Nick's throat, moving lower, to the join of his shoulder, Joe's hands touching Nick's chest, his waist. Nick's painfully aware that he's naked.

"Earlier you said you wanted to turn me," Nick says, trying desperately not to think about how Joe's touching him, trying to block it out. He shivers. "You always said that."

"But you said you didn't want me to," Joe says. God, like that's ever made a difference, like Joe's ever listened to Nick saying no to anything. Joe's mouth moves over the punctures on Nick's neck, where he was bitten before, and Joe presses the flat of his tongue against them, firm and wet, slick moving over the wounds. Nick's cock twitches. Oh fuck. Oh no. Joe's hand drops a little lower, trailing down Nick's belly, and this time Joe sucks a little bit on Nick's bite. Nick goes all hot and ashamed, his dick hardening.

"Joe, stop it," Nick says, starting to feel frantic. He pushes at Joe's head, trying to get him off, but Nick's still weak from blood loss and Joe doesn't budge.

"You're so warm," Joe says wonderingly. He presses two fingers against Nick's pulse gently, so Nick can feel his own heart beating against them, so Joe can feel it against his fingers. "I forgot what that feels like." His other hand runs down Nick's side, to the crease of his bare hip, and Nick's getting harder and harder at Joe's smooth skin, the unhesitating way he's touching Nick, like Nick belongs to him. God, Nick's so fucked up, getting more turned on by this cool, still monster, his own brother, than by a girl, by any human he's seen this whole past year. He wants Joe to stop and he wants him to keep going all at once, and he's afraid.

"Please stop," Nick whispers as Joe nuzzles into his skin, pushing Nick back onto the pillows. Joe's getting warmer as he touches Nick, picking up Nick's body heat, and Joe's hand moves lower still as he sucks at the edges of Nick's bite. "Joe!" Nick gasps. "No, don't --" But then Joe's done what Nick was desperately afraid he'd do, pushed the sheets off Nick's naked body and wrapped his hand around Nick's cock, which is painfully hard.

Joe grins down at Nick when he feels it. The smile bares his sharp, dangerous teeth, and Nick shrinks back from him. "Nick," Joe says, fiercely happy. "See, I knew you liked this. I knew you wanted it."

"No," Nick says weakly, his protest not even sounding convincing to himself, and Joe's already sliding down his body, his hands like a vise on Nick's hips, holding him down. Nick's cock bobs in front of Joe's face, flushed and fat and humiliating, and Joe licks at it, swirling his wet tongue under the head as Nick jerks forward into the touch without meaning to.

"Yeah, you like that," Joe says, sucking on the tip for just a second. Nick makes a strangled noise. God, he doesn't want this, he doesn't want to be this way. "Have you been thinking about my mouth this whole time?" Joe says, and for a second his eyes look black and empty, like there's no one behind them at all. "About me doing this?" And God, maybe Nick has, waking up hard from his dreams all those times, the way he hasn't been able to stop thinking about Joe doing this, the way he hasn't been able to let anyone else touch him.

Joe smiles up at him, a dark smile like he knows what Nick's thinking, and then he swallows down all of Nick's cock in one horrible, amazing movement, like a snake with an unhinging jaw. Nick moans and twists involuntarily, arching his back and pressing the top of his head back into the pillow, his body contorting. Right, Joe doesn't have to breathe. Joe's mouth feels so horribly good around him, going wet and deep, and when Nick looks down, gasping, Joe's mouth is stretched all red and obscene around his dick. Joe's movements still have that smooth not-rightness to them, lithe somehow as he bobs up, then fucks down deep, taking Nick's whole cock down his throat, inhumanly careful with his teeth, so it feels like he doesn't even have any, like his mouth's just a wet hole. Nick can't help it, he loses himself a little, shoving his cock deeper into Joe's mouth before he realizes he shouldn't, that he's going to choke him.

"Sorry," Nick gasps -- God, he doesn't even want this, and here he's apologizing to the vampire doing it to him, he's so fucked up, such a pervert.

Joe bobs off with an obscene wet smack. "You won't choke me," he says, that bright, fierce look in his dead eyes. "Go ahead, little brother." And he takes Nick's cock deep all at once again.

Nick groans, all that wet pressure down to the root of him, and he can't help it, he grabs the back of Joe's head and lets himself lose control, rutting into Joe's open throat, hands twisting in Joe's hair as he uses him, fucks Joe's mouth like he's fucking a girl. Joe relaxes his throat and just takes it, lets Nick thrust into him.

Then Joe's cheeks hollow, sucking on him, and Nick comes so hard, comes right in Joe's mouth, and Joe swallows and swallows, his adam's apple working, and he keeps moving his tongue around Nick the whole time, until Nick's wrung out and finished, oversensitive and overstimulated. Even after he's gone soft Joe keeps worrying at him with his tongue until Nick's gasping and saying, "Stop, stop," at Joe, trying to push him off. Joe finally goes reluctantly, Nick's cock popping out of his mouth like Joe had wanted to keep it there forever. Joe wipes his mouth filthily, smirking up at Nick.

Nick slumps back onto the pillows, his legs sprawling apart, exhausted and sweaty and trying to catch his breath. He feels all dopey and a little lightheaded, his ears buzzing. Joe's still between his legs, lapping halfheartedly at Nick's balls, just little licks like a kitten, moving down slowly to the skin between Nick's balls and his ass. Nick doesn't push him away -- what's the point? He wants this. He's wanted it all year.

Joe's finger slides down over Nick's asshole, just touching, not pressing in, his finger slick with spit. Nick closes his eyes but can't help squirming a little at the contact, at the memory. He hates how good it feels, Joe's tongue licking down over him, wet and messy. They're all alone out here, alone in the house, alone in the town, Nick the only living person for miles. He's outside the cities, in the wilderness with the monsters, and there's no one to see, no one to stop it. Nick feels like he's barely human -- maybe he's been barely human for awhile now, separated from other people for so long he can't remember what it's like to be one of them.

It's cold in this house, an October night with no heat or electricity out here anymore, and the house smells like it's been shut up for a long time, like old wallpaper and dust and rotting leaves, the way a mausoleum probably smells. Nick wonders if it's Halloween yet -- he lost track of the date in the last few days. For all he knows, it could be today, or maybe he missed it altogether. Maybe it's already November.

Joe's finger rests right on Nick's hole, starting to push forward just a little, not sliding in, but just putting pressure there with the tip, so Nick can feel how he could press in at any moment. It's the same feeling as when Joe's teeth were resting against his neck, and that's so fucked up he can't begin to deal with it. "You fucked anyone since last year?" Joe says, looking up at Nick, his eyes dark.

Nick shakes his head. His chest is rising and falling rapidly, and he can't get his heart to slow down.

Joe smiles a little. "Anyone fuck you?" His voice is very low.

Nick shakes his head again, closing his eyes. With his eyes closed he can almost pretend it's the real Joe touching him, the living Joe. Not that that makes it better -- it's his brother either way. But still.

"Good," Joe says. His finger starts wiggling forward, pressing through the ring of muscle, starting to work Nick open, the way only Joe's ever touched him, the place only Joe's ever been. It's hard for Joe to get his finger into Nick, though -- he keeps having to pull back a little and then work forward again, corkscrewing his finger in. "Fuck, you're tight," he murmurs, and Nick squirms a little, trying to get comfortable. It's been a long time.

Finally Joe makes a frustrated noise and gets up, going to rummage through some of the stuff on the dresser of the bedroom, the old abandoned detritus of whoever used to live here. Joe pulls his shirt off as he's looking, and Nick can see the lines of muscle in his back, ropey and defined. It's the kind of body Joe wanted back when he was alive and obsessed with working out all the time, drinking health shakes -- strange that he got it now that he's dead, six-pack abs and broad shoulders tapering down to pale, narrow hips.

Nick could get up while Joe's distracted, could try to make a break for it, but he lies there naked on the bed instead, waiting. When Joe turns back around, he's got a tub of Vaseline in his hand.

Nick closes his eyes again, breathing steadily, and listens to Joe's footsteps walking back over to him. Then Joe's hands are on his legs, spreading them wider, lifting them back and away, putting them over Joe's shoulders. Nick's strong and lean from a year on the road, tough and flexible and wiry, and he lets himself bend, lets Joe spread him open, leave him exposed.

This time Joe's finger slides in easy, and Joe makes a hushed, appreciative noise. "You're so hot inside," he says, and Nick just tries to breathe, not to listen to the obscene wet noises that come as Joe starts to fuck him with his finger, sliding it in and out. It's only one finger but Nick feels spread open, Joe intrusive and strange inside him, and Joe twists it so it feels good, so Nick groans. God, he remembers this, he's been trying to forget it for such a long time.

"Wanted to do this for so long," Joe says, pushing in even deeper. His voice is dark and low, and it's the voice Nick's known all his life, since he was in a cradle, and it's his brother's knuckles pressing hard against his ass. "Even since before. Since you were so little."

"Don't," Nick says, feeling desperate -- he just, he needs Joe to not say stuff like that, to stop making him remember who this is, what they're doing. He just wants to lie here and not think about any of it, just let it happen.

Joe works a second finger in beside the first and that's enough to distract Nick, to let him focus on the feeling of being spread wide, being split in two by cool fingers digging deep inside him. Joe's fingers move faster and faster, like he's getting impatient, and Nick hears Joe undo his fly, the zip of it loud in the stillness of the room.

Nick waits, knowing what's coming, trying to breathe evenly as Joe crawls up over him, pushing Nick's legs even farther back, almost folding him in half. Joe's fingers slip out of Nick's ass and Nick feels hollow and open, keeping his eyes closed even though he can feel Joe hovering over him now, can feel the thick fleshy head of Joe's cock bump at his ass. It starts to press in, fat and broad, and the slow burn of it is terrible, makes Nick have to work not to flinch away.

He can tell Joe's trying to go slow, but Joe makes a little whimpery noise about halfway in and pauses, like he's losing control, and then he says, "Nick, I have to--" breaking off as without warning he shoves in _deep_ , pushing the rest of the way into Nick so it hurts, so Nick cries out and his eyes fly open involuntarily.

Joe's right there, close and looking down at him, his whole body pressed against Nick's, his cock impaling him, the hot stretch of it deep inside, and Joe looks like himself except for his black, black eyes, eyes so dark it's like they're sucking up all the light in the room.

"Joe," Nick says, blinking his eyes because they're watering, and Joe's just looking at him like he loves him, but he's paper-white and Nick knows that under his lips his teeth are too sharp, that even though Joe's warmed up from touching Nick, that he's really dead and cold, a corpse's body inside Nick.

Joe groans and draws his hips back, so his cock slides almost all the way out of Nick, slick with Vaseline, and then he shoves back inside again, so Nick's body rocks with the impact, and then Joe's starting a rhythm, starting to pound into Nick. Nick feels swollen and full around him, everything intense and too much to handle, and he lets his body get jarred along with Joe's movements, groaning every time Joe drives in. The sensation of it is building, making Nick get hard again as Joe slams into him, making Nick's dick plump up hot and thick.

"Nicky," Joe says. "Missed you, I missed you, why'd you run?" His eyes are these ink-black empty holes, not the friendly greenish-brown they used to be, and Nick can't look at them anymore, he just can't. He closes his eyes and presses his hips up into Joe on his next thrust, squirms underneath him until Joe's hitting that place inside him that Nick remembers, hitting that place that makes his cock twitch, go hard and aching.

Joe grunts every time he shoves into Nick, the long slick slide of his cock into Nick's body, and Nick reaches down between them to jerk himself off. He and Joe are all entwined, wrapped around each other, twisted up into one animal, and Nick's gasps sound loud in the room, his gasps and the slapping sound of flesh coming together. Joe starts to nuzzle his face into Nick's neck, kissing him with lips and tongue but Nick's painfully aware of Joe's teeth right there, even though they're not touching him. When Joe mouths again at Nick's bite, Nick's cock starts weeping, drippy and wet, slicking up his hand as he tugs on it. "Joe!" Nick gasps, and his eyes open again, and this time he can't see Joe's eyes, can just see his muscled back, his hips and ass between Nick's spread legs, the obscene pornography of it.

Nick can feel every ridge of Joe's lips as he slides them over the edges of the bite, insanely sensitive, and he remembers the intense feeling of teeth tearing into him, of fangs going so deep inside him, as deep as Joe's cock is now, that awful burn of it, the cool surrender, and he wants Joe to bite him, wants that feeling back. He wants it more than anything, for Joe's cock and teeth to be one burn, aching inside him. Nick presses his neck up into Joe's mouth, but Joe doesn't do it, just keeps licking at him, tonguing Nick's skin.

"Joe, please!" Nick finally says, as Joe starts moving faster in his ass, pounding him harder. He sounds hysterical, begging, and knows he'll be ashamed later, but now, with his brother between his legs, his brother's cock inside him, he's way beyond shame. "Please, bite me," he says into Joe's hair, swallowing.

Joe's head comes up, surprised and staring at Nick for a long moment, a long desperate pause before Joe's eyes go bright and he lunges at Nick's neck, his teeth punching into him, Joe starting to suck at Nick's hot blood, the pull at Nick's neck going straight to his cock so Nick's coming at the same time as the blood runs out of him, the come splattering up his stomach, hot and messy all over him. Nick comes so hard that his vision starts to gray out, Joe's mouth at his neck and Joe's cock inside him, and it goes on and on, racking his body. Joe moans as Nick shudders around him and shoves into him harder and sucks on Nick's neck, and as the blood flows out of Nick, finally, finally he loses enough of it that everything goes mercifully dark.

**

Nick wakes up feeling weak and ravenous, alone and naked and sore in bed in the musty house. Joe's nowhere to be seen, and for a second, before Nick remembers to be relieved, he feels crushingly alone, abandoned.

He gets dressed as fast as he can, grabbing his shirt and jeans from where they were drying on the furniture, now stiff and cold from hanging up. Then he drinks the whole bottle of water left on the nightstand before he rummages through his pack for food, wolfing down a granola bar and then getting out his can opener to wrench open some Spaghetti-O's. He's so starving he almost doesn't even get out a spoon, is tempted to just eat with his fingers, all light-headed and exhausted from blood loss. Joe can't have drunk too much from him, but Nick feels weird anyway, out of it and hungry.

He expects Joe to come back in at any moment, but by the time Nick's finished the can and started in on some beef jerky, there's still no sign of him.

Maybe Joe's gone. Maybe he's not coming back. Nick doesn't know how to feel about that.

It's dark out behind the curtains, the middle of the night, and Joe could be out there killing people. People could be dying because Nick couldn't bring himself to kill his brother, because Nick's a sick pervert whose ass is still slick with his brother's come.

Nick should go out and find him, make sure Joe's not actually hurting anyone. He gets up to strap his weapons back on, to get ready to hunt, but before he can, he hears distant singing. Confused, he walks tentatively to the door of the bedroom, listening. He thinks it's coming from close by.

When he opens the door he can tell it's Joe's voice, that it's Joe singing soft and melancholy somewhere in the house. As Nick moves cautiously down the hallway he begins to make out the words.

Joe's singing an old hymn, but he's transposed it to a minor key, so it sounds thin and creepy, echoing in the empty house. "What can make me whole again?" Joe sings as floorboards creak under Nick's feet. Joe's humming through the words he can't remember. "Nothing but the blood of la-la. Oh, precious is hmm-mmm, that makes me white as snow! No other mmm I know, nothing but the blood of mmm-mmm."

The song's coming from one of the rooms off the hallway, and Nick hesitantly pushes in the door, trying to keep it from creaking. As the door swings open, he can see that it's a child's bedroom, a little girl's, all pink and frilly. Joe's got his back to the door, and he's sitting on the floor playing with a dollhouse, moving barbies around the rooms, still singing his song about blood, making sure not to say the name, "Jesus." He probably thinks it's funny, a vampire singing hymns about blood like that. When Nick takes a step into the room he can see that Joe's got a Barbie and a Ken and is rocking their bodies together obscenely, pretending they're fucking, even creepier when it's in the middle of the stuffed animals and ruffled bedskirt, Joe sitting cross-legged on a pink carpet.

Joe must hear him then, because he turns around, grinning his sharp white grin, his eyes all wrong. From the back he'd just looked like Joe, but facing Nick he's a perversion, vacant and inanimate, his eyes black buttons, flat and reflective.

"You're awake!" Joe says. "Awesome, c'mere, I got you a present." He jumps up, movements smooth and graceful, grabbing Nick by the arm and dragging him away, their feet loud as they thunder down the empty staircase, Joe obviously not caring if anybody hears them.

In the front hallway there's a guitar, propped beside the door. It's a good guitar, expensive, the wood beautiful and fine-grained.

"Do you like it?" Joe says, bright and keyed up, all nerves behind his empty eyes. "It's the best one I could find."

Nick hasn't touched a musical instrument this whole year. He looks at it, not knowing what to do. He doesn't think he wants to play.

"C'mon," Joe says, picking it up and holding it out to him. "Take it. That's just the first half of the surprise."

Feeling like someone else is moving his limbs, like he's a marionette or a mechanized toy, Nick slowly takes the guitar, Joe beaming at him with a razor-toothed grin. Then Joe's throwing the front door of the house open and bouncing down the steps into the empty street. The moon's nearly full, so Nick can see to follow him as Joe walks down the middle of the road, right down the yellow stripe, through the weedy grass growing up through the cracking asphalt, past the broken windows of vacant houses. Joe's all silver-pale in the moonlight, unearthly ahead of him.

Joe leads him to an empty space that was probably originally a park -- there's a playground with broken swings, a rusty slide, a cracked water fountain. Down at one end is a bandshell, where probably a marching band played for Fourth of July, where maybe the whole town assembled a long time ago. Joe heads straight for the stage, jumping up onto it like he belongs there.

Being on stage is another thing Nick hasn't done in a year. He stands at the base of it holding the new guitar awkwardly, not sure what to do.

"C'mon, Nick, look, isn't this great?" Joe says. He spreads his arms out, gesturing to the whole place. "Get up here and play!"

Nick doesn't want to, but he feels like his will's been taken away, like he has to do what Joe says. He goes around to the stairs, climbing them carefully, putting the strap of the guitar over his shoulders. His stomach's churning just being up there, just touching a guitar. No Kevin. No Garbo, no John Taylor. Just him and Joe and the grass coming up through the floor of the stage, the vast empty expanse of vacant lot where the audience should be.

But Joe seems to find the emptiness of the town, of the park, of America, to be this awesome thing, making the whole world his playground. With his mouth, he starts sounding out the start of "Tonight."

"Nick, c'mon!" he says. Like a zombie, Nick starts playing the chords, his fingers shaping them without him having to think about it, the sense memory of it so clear. He's playing the song a little too slow, though, and acoustic like this it sounds like a dirge. But Joe's bobbing his head, enthusiastic like they've got amps and Kevin and a band, like their parents are in the wings, like the grassy space in front of them is full of screaming fans. The strings hurt Nick's uncalloused fingers.

"Well, here we are again," Joe sings, and then they're playing a concert for nobody, for the swaying grass and the owls in the trees, hooting in the distance. "As the morning sun begins to rise, we're fading fast," Joe sings, and Nick feels like throwing up.

Nick doesn't know why he keeps playing, but he does, through the whole song, and a few more after that. Joe's just so happy. Later they go back to the house and Joe fucks him again, bending him over the couch, telling Nick over and over how glad he is he found him. Nick thinks about being back in that cemetery, warm under the ground, about the peace it must be to just be bones.

**

"Where do you want to go?" Joe asks. He's standing on top of an abandoned minivan with long-flat tires, bouncing absently, the metal creaking.

Nick's sitting on the curb, his pack on his back, stakes strapped to his chest, ready to go. While they were having sex Joe bit him again, drank, so he's still weak and foggy-headed, unable to think about anything much. His neck hurts; his head aches. Joe's very high up, too high to really look at directly without straining his neck, pulling at the scabs there.

It's strange to be in a group of two again, to be talking out loud about where to go. It's like Nick's a normal hunter, someone who works in a team, who has a backup. He thinks longingly of the hunters he met in Cincinnati, who seemed so ordinary, so human, who wanted him to join them. He should've done that a long time ago, teamed up with someone, been a person. Maybe that could've saved him from this, but it's too late now. It feels like years since he met those hunters.

"East," Nick says, even so. "Let's go east." Those other hunters were going up the east coast, he remembers vaguely. Maybe that's the place to go if you want to be human, even if there's not a lot of hope for Nick at this point.

"Okay," Joe says, and he jumps off the roof, landing on his feet like a cat, light. He shouldn't be able to do that; every once in awhile Nick'll forget that he's a vampire, that he has this cool, durable strength to him, and then he'll jump off a minivan like it's jumping off a curb and Nick remembers. "East it is."

**

Traveling together, they go more slowly than Nick would by himself. Joe's a ball of energy, swinging from lampposts, walking the whole way down one street on top of parked cars, leaping lightly from one roof to the next, Nick trudging down the sidewalk beside him. When they pass stores Joe insists on going in, seeing if there's anything cool to loot. There hardly ever is -- mostly people took the good stuff with them when they moved to the cities, and a lot of vampires have been here before them anyway, but sometimes you'll find the odd place that hasn't been touched. Joe's constantly optimistic that this next store is going to be the one.

Joe breaks the window of a little boutique with a trash can, the glass shattering loud in the stillness of the night. He looks back at Nick after he does it, all grinning and pleased with himself; if he were a dog, his tail would be wagging. Nick feels strange as he watches Joe disappear into the blackness of the store. Joe's better at seeing in the dark than Nick is -- maybe his eyes really are all pupil, black and receptive.

Nick sits on the curb to wait for him, and maybe five minutes later, Joe comes bursting out of the store again, beaming. He's got something purple in his hands and he practically dances over to Nick, his movements still oddly smooth and light -- Nick can't get used to them. "Nick, Nick," he says. "Stand up."

Nick gets to his feet slowly, and Joe starts wrapping the purple cloth around his neck -- it's a scarf. "It's perfect!" Joe says, tucking it around the back of his collar. "Do you like it?"

Nick looks down at it and doesn't know what to say. It is warm, welcome in the late autumn chill, but the purple isn't exactly good hunting camouflage. Not that he's doing any hunting now anyway. "Sure," Nick says finally, perversely not wanting to hurt Joe's feelings, not wanting to let him down. The scarf covers up his bites anyway. That's a little bit of a relief. "It's great."

"You look so awesome," Joe says. It's strange to see him acting like Joe, all bouncy and enthusiastic, but moving so much more gracefully than Joe ever did, his eyes flat, his skin colorless. Nick's half paralyzed with horror and half wanting to fall into it, to imagine it's really Joe, to have a brother again. He's missed him -- the sick thing is that he's missed him more than anything.

"Thanks, Joe," Nick says. He feels fake, like he's putting on a play, calling this thing Joe when it's not Joe. Even though he can almost pretend.

Joe smiles, but then suddenly moves vampire-fast, so fast it's just a blur, snatching at something at their feet. When he comes back up again, he's got a snake in his hand, holding it pinched between two fingers right behind the head, the snake writhing around. It's just a little garter snake, but it makes Nick jump, rear back. With everything so overgrown, snakes are a real problem for hunters -- Nick carries a snakebite kit in his pack, and he hears rattlesnakes pretty regularly.

Joe puts the snake to his mouth and slides it against one fang, splitting it open. As the snake dies he puts it in his mouth, sucking on it like it's a lollypop, draining the blood from it casually, like he does it all the time.

He finally notices that Nick's staring at him in horror and looks a little confused. "What?" he says, all garbled around the snake.

"What are you doing?" Nick manages to get out, feeling sick. The snake hangs out of the corner of Joe's mouth, making Joe into a horror, something foreign and incomprehensible, not his brother at all.

Joe still looks confused. "I'm hungry," he says. "What? You can have the meat when I'm done, if you want."

Nick swallows and turns, trying to go back to walking, trying to forget it. He just -- he needs to not think about it. Any of it. Their whole life out here these last few days. "No," he says. "That's okay."

There aren't a lot of humans wandering around at night anymore, and Nick knew that vampires drain animals a lot to stay alive. He finds the carcasses all the time. He just... didn't think about Joe doing it. Or about it being snakes.

They walk through the night, finally stopping when Joe says it's getting toward sunrise, though Nick can't see much of a difference in the sky in front of them. But Joe says he can smell it, and then goes about trying to pick a house for them to sleep in during the day. It's strange -- Nick's gotten used to sleeping outside in the sunshine, trusting the light to protect him, but now that he's with Joe they need thick curtains, the safety of walls, everything reversed. Nick hasn't seen the sun in what feels like forever, relegated to this long night, this long darkness.

Once Joe finally picks a house, he goes around to every room of it shutting the blinds, closing the curtains, making sure the windows are completely covered, that no light can get through the chinks, that it's all closed up like a tomb. The house feels even stuffier and more claustrophobic once that's done, no stars out the windows, no trees, just Nick and Joe in these shut-up rooms. Joe takes Nick up to the master bedroom, the double bed there.

"Nick," he says as he takes Nick's clothes off. "Nicholas, Nicky J." He touches Nick all over, running his hands over Nick's chest and arms and back like he's memorizing it all, like he's checking to see that Nick's all there, the way a parent might count all their baby's fingers and toes. His skin is cool, and Nick starts shivering as Joe nuzzles into his neck. It's always coldest right before the sun comes up, and it's been a long night walking out in the late autumn chill. The house at least cuts the wind, but it's not heated and there aren't enough blankets. Nick can't stop shivering.

Joe licks at his neck. "You cold?" he asks.

Nick nods, trying to keep his teeth from chattering. He feels out of control, how he can't stop his jaw from shaking, can't stop his body jittering. How he wants Joe to stop touching him and to never stop, all at once.

Joe licks at his neck again, his teeth grazing Nick but not pressing in. "I could turn you," Joe says slowly, quiet and hesitant like he's not sure how Nick will react, like he's offering Nick a present he's sure is going to be thrown back in his face. "It's easy. You wouldn't ever be cold again."

Nick's cold, so cold. But he can't do it, can't say yes, he just can't. His heart's beating hard and he doesn't want to die. "No," Nick says through his chattering teeth. "No, thanks."

Joe doesn't press it, even though he keeps nuzzling at Nick's neck. "Okay," he says, and then he's kissing Nick, starting to turn him over in the bed. Nick lets him, going over onto his belly, dropping his head to his forearms. Joe's cold at his back, beginning to move, work him open, and Nick's still shivering. He lies there freezing and tries not to think.

**

Nick oversleeps, woozy and exhausted from blood loss and stress. He doesn't know how long ago the sun set, but Joe's not in bed with him, and Nick dresses slowly in the stuffy bedroom. He's starving and running low on food, but he's pretty sure this house is near a 7-11 that probably still has some canned goods. He might as well go down and get some while he waits for Joe to get back.

The street is dark and empty when he gets outside, the stars bright, and he picks through the wreck of the convenience store, looking for anything he can find. It smells terrible in there, and he thinks animals have gotten into some of the food, but he finds some cans that are intact and takes them out into the street to eat them.

He ends up sitting on the hood of a car, eating mandarin oranges out of a can with his fingers. It's very quiet, just the sound of crickets and the wind in the trees. It doesn't sound like there's anyone else alive for miles.

He's just finished the oranges and has gotten off the car to grab another one of the cans from the ground when he hears someone yelping in the distance, a gleeful, ecstatic sound. Nick goes very still and wary, listening hard for where it's coming from, but after a few more yelps, coming closer and closer, he realizes that it's Joe.

God, Joe's so dumb, being so loud -- why's he drawing so much attention to himself? Though -- maybe Nick's thinking like a prey animal. Maybe if you're the predator you don't have to worry about things like that.

The yelps get closer and closer, and then Joe tears around the corner, running fast and happy, and he doesn't even slow down much as he gets close to Nick, just barrels into him, laughing and bearing him down to the pavement, arms and legs all over him like a puppy. Nick goes down on his back, Joe on top of him, Nick laughing in spite of himself.

Joe kisses him all over his face, and he's hot and sticky, and Nick doesn't know why, but when Joe pulls back a little Nick can see that his mouth is dripping red, blood all over him, smeared dark and thick over his chin, around his lips. Nick recoils back, banging his head against the asphalt.

"What?" Joe says.

Nick feels like he's going to throw up. He's been pretending this is Joe, that this isn't an evil thing, but here Joe is coming back to him with someone's blood still on him, someone Nick didn't stop him from killing. "You're all bloody," Nick manages to say. He just wants Joe to go away, wants this all to go away, wants to stop existing somehow. He can see his own pale reflection in Joe's black eyes.

"Hmm?" Joe says. "Oh. Right. It's just from a deer, would you relax?"

"A deer?" Nick says.

Joe's starting to unbutton his shirt, still weighing Nick down, cool and heavy against Nick's skin, trying to work his thigh between Nick's legs, spreading them. "Yeah, I was starving," he says. "So I killed a deer."

Nick's looking up at him but Joe won't make eye contact. His shirt's bloody too, spatters of gore everywhere. "Would you even tell me if it were from a person?" Nick asks.

"Sure," Joe says, but he's still not looking Nick in the eye.

Nick wants to believe him so badly. And really -- it probably was a deer. There aren't many people hanging around outside the cities at night, right? So... it probably was. Though Nick wonders what he would do if he actually saw Joe killing someone, if he actually saw Joe eating a human being. That's an uncomfortable thought, because he honestly doesn't know, and that scares him as much as anything, Joe on top of him like this, hot blood dripping off him and onto Nick. Nick all bloody by proxy.

Joe's hyper and wound-up, rolling his hips against Nick, working his hands between them to try to get at Nick's fly. And the sick thing is, Nick recognizes that feeling, being all pent up and full of adrenaline after a hunt, killing something and then wanting to fuck something, needing to get that energy out. After hunting vampires, Nick would feel the exact same way, needing to jerk off somewhere afterward, desperate and turned on and trying not to think about how fucked up that was. He remembers once having vampire blood on his hand as he did it, needing to touch himself so badly he couldn't even bother to wash up first.

He's never seen it from quite this angle, though, Joe's bloody face looking down at him, Joe's pointed teeth and matte eyes, Joe shoving his hips into him, hard through his pants, desperate and needy and humping Nick like he can't help himself.

They're in the middle of the street, lying all obscene out in the open where anyone could see them. "Joe," Nick says, pushing at his shoulder. "C'mon, let's go inside."

"Why?" Joe says. "No one's around." He's worked Nick's fly open and his hand wraps around Nick's cock, making Nick jerk up into him involuntarily, getting harder and harder. Gravel and weeds poke at the back of Nick's neck. The faded yellow line down the center of the street is beside his left hand, and Nick's listening hard, mortified, trying to hear if anyone's coming up on them, if anybody's going to catch them, but all he can hear is his own heart in his ears, his own gasping breaths. Joe wiggles Nick's jeans down just far enough, so they're around his knees, so Joe can press his legs apart, and Nick's already aching for it, can feel how bad he wants Joe inside.

"Joe," Nick says, squirming around. "C'mon, someone could see us."

Joe snorts a little bit, wiggling his own jeans down so his cock springs out, so it's poking between Nick's legs. Nick spreads them wider before he can stop himself. "No one cares," he says. "No one's here. We've got the whole world to ourselves."

That's not true, Nick knows it's not true, but right now it almost feels like it. Over Joe's shoulder he can see rusting cars, the broken windows of storefronts, grass growing up through the sidewalk, empty stars in the sky. The only sounds are nature sounds, animals, a raccoon digging at an old trashcan, the whole countryside reverting to wilderness. And Joe and Nick in the middle of it, fucking alone in the street, Joe between Nick's legs.

Joe guides his cock to Nick's asshole with his hand, starting to stuff the bulb of the head inside. Nick's still so slick from the last time it goes easy, so open from how much they've been doing this that it doesn't even hurt, that the burn and stretch of it just feels good. Once his dick's caught there, Joe presses in hard and fast, sheathing his whole length hard inside Nick, so Nick can feel him deep, so Nick's all full and tight, overwhelmed with it.

Nick gasps, and Joe looks down at him with happy soot-black eyes, inhuman and wrong and pleased, his bloody mouth sharp and brutal, his lips falling open. "Fuck, you feel so good," Joe says as he starts to move, as the slick length of him slips back out of Nick before he shoves it back in, moving out slow and in fast, so Nick's body jars and Nick grunts on each thrust. "You take it so good," Joe says. The blood smeared around his mouth stands out even brighter on his pale skin, and Nick closes his eyes, giving in to it.

The wind picks up, ruffling the weeds around them, and Nick tries to stop thinking about whether anyone else is around, vampires or humans or whoever, whether anyone could be an audience to this. How Nick's legs are spread and open, how Joe's fucking him hard and fast, rutting crudely in the middle of the road.

Vampires probably wouldn't think anything of it, though. Just another vampire and his human pet, some stupid loser who thinks vampires are sexy, who's willing to go along with it, to get drained bit by bit as the vampire fucks him -- until finally one day the vampire gets bored and sucks him dry, leaves him white and empty on the side of the road, not even bothering to turn him. Stupid teenage Twilight fans, stupid groupies. If a vampire walked by right now and saw Joe doing this to Nick, they'd just figure Nick was one of those.

Maybe Nick is. Nick doesn't even know anymore. He closes his eyes and starts to jerk himself off in time with Joe moving in his body, waits for the bite to come.

**

The days are starting to blur together, turning into a horrible routine -- Nick's more and more lightheaded every day, dizzy and fatigued, and there's no way his body can take much more of this. He needs to stop it, get to a city, see a doctor, something. Get free from this horror, this slow death he's walking towards. Sometimes during the day while Joe's asleep he takes a stake and tries to make himself put it through Joe's heart, put an end to this. One of them has to die here, they can't go on like this, but he can never bring himself to actually do it, actually kill Joe. He wishes he could, but he doesn't have the stomach for it, no matter how much he tells himself that this is a monster, that it isn't Joe, that it isn't his brother. No matter what Joe does to him.

He thinks maybe he could manage running away, but every time he gets the chance he just can't seem to actually leave, be alone again -- he can't stand the thought of going back to having nobody, even if this perverse non-Joe shouldn't really count as somebody. Besides, running away would take a plan, and he can't think with his constant headache, his foggy brain that can't seem to focus on much of anything. It always seems easier just to sleep, to give in, to let Joe take him east for one more day.

He loses track of the time. It gets colder and darker every day.

**

One night Joe finds them a house to stay in that vampires have used before, so all the windows are boarded up, the inside protected from the sunlight. There's a drained human corpse downstairs, just starting to rot, and Joe drags it outside matter-of-factly, dumping it into the backyard like trash, like nothing you would ever think of bothering to bury. Nick tries not to look at it, its limbs splayed, torso rolled half on its side, its head at an impossible angle. The whole house smells awful, like decay, but Joe doesn't seem to notice. Nick pretends he doesn't notice either.

The house is pitch black with the windows boarded up, so from the inside you can't tell how close it is to dawn at all. Joe leads Nick up to the bedroom, Nick following him blindly in the dark, but at least upstairs Joe lights a candle, so Nick can see the dim outlines of the furniture.

Joe sits up against the headboard of the bed, pulling Nick in between his spread legs so Nick's leaning back against his chest. He starts jerking Nick off slowly as he bites his neck, starting to sip blood out in this leisurely way, not taking too much at a time, just licking drops away. Nick's all sluggish, barely awake, Joe's erection digging into his back, Joe's cool body wrapped around him. It's a night like any other, lethargic and sexual and Joe's hand moving in time with his mouth on Nick's skin. Nick reclines against him and doesn't know if he hates him or loves him.

Nick's not sure how much time goes by -- he's half-asleep, his eyes mostly closed, the lazy arousal drawing out -- but then there's a bang from downstairs, startling him awake. Joe stops moving behind him, sitting up straight, going tense.

"What's that?" Nick mutters as Joe starts to get up, sliding out from under Nick, pulling his jeans back on with those strange graceful movements he has. "Joe?" Nick says.

Joe smiles tightly, his black eyes flat, reflecting the flame of the candle from beside the bed. "Probably some other vampires looking to camp out here," he says. "No big deal." Then he yells, "Hey, occupado!" as he starts out of the room, shutting the door carefully behind him.

Oh, okay. Joe will take care of it. Nick's so tired. He lets his eyes flutter closed again, leaning back against the pillows. He hurts all over, and he can hear Joe running down the stairs. He just wants to go to sleep.

But then to his surprise there's yelling, the sounds of a scuffle downstairs, thumping and banging, and Nick's wide awake again, sitting straight up. He doesn't know what's going on, but the sounds of a fight have made his instincts kick in, so he's grabbed a stake and is up and out of the bed before he quite knows what he's doing, pulling his boxers back on fast, heart thumping with adrenaline. Why is Joe fighting? Why would other vampires want to hurt him?

Nick fumbles his way through the deep darkness of the hallway, finding the stairs by feel. As he goes down them, though, it's getting lighter, and pretty soon he's squinting -- that's sunlight. He didn't even know it was past dawn. It's so bright -- he'd forgotten how bright the sun is, even indirectly like this, even in the shadows away from it. The front door of the house must be open around the corner from the stairs.

There's a crash from right nearby, and Nick takes another step down, and suddenly he's low enough to see what's going on. He expects Joe to be fighting the other vampires -- but of course it's not vampires, the sun's out, of course it's not. There are two human hunters there instead, one lunging at Joe with a stake in his hand, Joe leaping out of the way and knocking him back, vampire-quick and terrifying, so the hunter flies across the room, crashing through an end table and into a wall, sliding slumped to the ground and staying there, not moving. Nick doesn't know if he's dead or just unconscious.

The other hunter circles around, then comes at Joe, stake poised to attack him. Joe tackles him to the ground so they're scuffling, Joe on top, then the hunter, grappling for dominance, Joe holding the hunter's wrist, keeping the stake away from him. They look so strange wrestling with each other like that, the hunter's tan so dark against Joe's pale skin.

No one's seen Nick yet, and he stands there paralyzed on the stairs, not knowing what to do. It's Joe, his brother Joe, fighting these strangers... but it's _not_ Joe, it's a demon in Joe's body, and Joe's just another vampire to these hunters, another vampire who they think deserves to die. Who Nick would kill without thinking twice about it if it weren't his brother. If Nick weren't pretending it was his brother.

The hunter who'd gotten thrown across the room, who has red hair, moves slightly, waking up, blinking his eyes rapidly like he's trying to get his vision to clear. He must have just been knocked out. As he looks blearily around the room, he's the first one to catch sight of Nick, and he stares, all confused and out of it, like he doesn't understand what he's seeing. For a second Nick realizes how strange this must look, Nick standing on the stairs in just his underwear, his pale bare chest, bite marks still on his neck, like any vampire groupie except for the stake in his hand. Coming downstairs from where he'd just been up in a vampire's bed.

For a second Nick thinks the hunter looks vaguely familiar, but before he can place him there's a bang and Nick swivels to look at the fight again, at what Joe's doing. The dark-haired hunter he's fighting is scrambling across the room to grab his stake -- the bang must've been Joe knocking it out of his hand. In a second, the hunter's on his feet again, holding the stake, spinning to face Joe, but while he was grabbing it, Joe looked up, caught sight of Nick standing there on the staircase.

Joe's face lights up. "Nick!" he says, like the cavalry's just come, like now he knows they can win. "Quick, help me out!"

At Joe's voice, the dark-haired hunter whips his head around to see who Joe's talking to, momentarily distracted, staring at Nick. In just that brief pause Joe seizes his advantage and is on him, twisting the hunter's wrist so the stake falls out of his hand. The hunter yells in pain and Joe lunges at his throat, sinking his teeth into it before the hunter even has a chance to move. It must be a glancing bite, because the hunter's still struggling, but oh God, what's Joe doing?

"Joe!" Nick yells. He can see the dark blood seeping out of the hunter's throat, but the other, redheaded hunter is barely getting to his feet, holding onto the doorjamb next to him for support like he's dizzy and unsteady from being knocked out, so it's not like he can even help his friend. Oh, God, Joe's going to kill this guy right in front of Nick.

Nick can't just stand here and watch this. He rushes over, grabs Joe's shoulder, tries to pull him off. "Joe!" he says again, trying to get him to stop, shaking his shoulder. "Joe, stop it!"

The dark-haired hunter is groaning, blood dribbling out of him, dark as it oozes down his throat around Joe's mouth, where Joe's not even sucking down all of it, and Joe won't stop, he won't stop, he's still drinking even though Nick's pleading with him, shaking him.

"C'mon, Nick," Joe mumbles. "We're winning." He slurps at the hunter's neck and he's not going to stop, he's going to drain him dry. He thinks Nick's on his side.

"Do something!" the redhead says from across the room, wobbling on his feet, clinging to the wall and looking at Nick like Nick's a fellow human being. "Please!" Nick looks at him helplessly for a second, not knowing what to do. How can the hunter and Joe both think Nick's on their side?

He doesn't know what to do, so he pulls at Joe harder, managing to dislodge him from the bite for a second, but that just annoys Joe. "Knock it off, Nicky," Joe says irritably and bats Nick away. He probably doesn't mean to hit him hard, but he's vampire-strong, and the blow knocks Nick back, hurts like hell on his collarbone.

Nick's angry now, goes to shove Joe back, and Joe hits him again, still trying to get back to drinking the hunter's blood, and then before Nick has time to think what he's doing, his hand moves out of instinct, reacting to the blow, to fighting with a vampire, and he brings the stake down. It goes into Joe's back, penetrating deep, through the cold flesh and blood, the squelch and pressure of it the same as every other time Nick has done this, the hundreds of times he's done this.

Joe goes limp, falling forward, heavy onto his prey, and the dark-haired hunter groans and shoves him off, so Joe's body slides away from him, falls onto the floor, the stake still buried in his chest. His limbs splay awkwardly and unnaturally, falling at odd angles, and he doesn't move.

Nick must've hit his heart. He always hits the heart. Joe's body is lying at his feet with Nick's stake buried deep inside him. There's a roaring in Nick's ears.

Nick staggers backward until he hits a wall, and then his knees give out so he slides down to the floor, still staring at Joe's body. It's lying right where that rotting human corpse had been when they came in. Everything's happening too fast and too bright, and how does Joe have a stake through him? Joe wasn't ready for that, had his back turned to Nick because it had never occurred to him that Nick might do that, turn traitor like that. Nick hadn't even totally meant to, he just -- he's staked so many vampires while they were doing that, sucking blood out of some human's throat, he couldn't help it. The hunter's blood is still smeared red around Joe's dead mouth.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nick can see that the redheaded hunter's finally steady enough to walk, and has hurried over to his friend, that he's wadded up a shirt or something to put some pressure on his friend's bite, trying to get the bleeding to slow down. They're talking in low murmurs to each other, all "You all right?" and "Here, let me..."

Nick can't process anything -- he feels like he should be able to rewind, to make it so none of that happened. He killed Joe -- how is that possible? He can still feel the stretch from Joe fucking him earlier, still feel where Joe's hands had been on his chest, his cock.

It's freezing in this house, a cold breeze coming in from the open door, and Nick starts to shiver, shake all over. He wraps his arms around his knees, scooting into the corner, so walls are on two sides of him, pressed against his back and side. Now that there's some light in the room, Nick can see the decay of the house like he hadn't when he and Joe had come in, the mildewed, peeling wallpaper, the dirty rug. It must still stink from the dead body earlier, too, but Nick's been inside so long he can't even smell that anymore, can only remember how strong the smell was at first, how it was like a blow to the face when you walked in the door.

The stake's made a gruesome hole in Joe's chest, blood slowly pooling underneath him, dripping out sluggishly since his heart's not beating, since he only has the blood in him that he's drunk. Nick did that to him.

"Hey," one of the hunters says, in a louder voice than they've been using up till now, all warm and friendly.

It takes Nick a second to realize the hunter's talking to him, and then even longer to be able to turn his head to look. Everything seems like it's happening at a distance.

It's the dark-haired one talking, the one with the bite. The other hunter must have gotten out their first-aid kit, because he's taping gauze to his friend's neck now, making a bandage to cover up the bite, most of the blood mopped up except for where it soaked into the dark-haired hunter's shirt. "Thanks," he says. "That was a close one. We really owe you."

Nick guesses he should say you're welcome, but he can't seem to get his mouth to move. He's gone numb, can't feel anything, can't think. The hunters look so odd, like there's something a little off about them, but then Nick realizes that he's just not used to seeing humans anymore, that the contrast between them and Joe makes them look cartoonishly healthy, color to their skin, their eyes ordinary brown and blue.

"Stop talking and hold still," the redhead murmurs to his friend, trying to tape the bandage in place, and the dark-haired one rolls his eyes, but holds still, making a face at Nick like, _you see what I put up with?_

But then as he looks at Nick, the dark-haired one's brow furrows, like he's trying to figure something out, and Nick starts to feel confused too, because now that he's really seeing them, he realizes he knows them from somewhere, but he can't place it.

"Um," the dark-haired one says. "Hey, aren't you -- I mean, aren't you that kid? From, where was it -- we waited at the gate together. I forget what city. You're a hunter."

The redhead looks up at Nick, surprised, but after he gets a good look at him he nods to himself. "Cincinnati," he says, filling in his friend's blanks. He goes back to the bandage, finishes putting the last piece of tape on, and takes a step back. "Yeah."

"I, um," Nick says. Oh, huh, they are those hunters. He had -- they were why he told Joe to go east. "Right, yeah. Hi."

"Are you okay?" the dark-haired one asks. "You're bleeding."

He is? Nick automatically puts a hand up to his neck and it comes back warm and sticky and bright with blood. Oh. Crap. Joe was too distracted to lick that closed and it must have been bleeding this whole time, because now that he looks it's all down Nick's chest, dark and gory.

"Here," the redhead says, and he grabs some cloth off the banister -- Nick and Joe had dropped all their stuff really haphazardly as they'd gone upstairs, leaving a trail of clothes behind them. The redhead comes over to Nick with the cloth and crouches down beside him, dabbing at Nick's bleeding neck, trying to get the blood cleared away so he can see the injury.

Nick knows he's going to see that it's a bite, that there are white scars of older ones beside it. That the hunters are going to realize Nick was calling that vampire by his name, that they're going to figure out what was going on, that Nick was letting Joe fuck him, that Nick's just some pathetic groupie with a hard-on for a monster. Normally Nick would be mortified at the idea of them finding out, but now he can't seem to feel anything. He can still see Joe's body over the hunter's shoulder.

The redhead's hands against Nick's neck feel incredibly hot, like there's something wrong, like they burn where they touch him. For a second Nick wonders if this guy has a fever or something before he remembers that human hands are supposed to be warm.

The hunter sucks in a breath through his teeth as he sees Nick's bite, like he thinks it looks like it hurts, but then his face goes quiet and still as he sees the scars, and his eyes flick down to Nick's boxers for a second, then up to Nick's face, wary and confused. Nick can see him putting it together. He leans his head back against the wall behind him and closes his eyes, waiting for the hunter to say something, to be disgusted.

The hunter keeps quiet, though. He just goes back to dabbing at Nick's neck, and finally he presses the cloth against the bite. "Hold that there," he says to Nick. "Keep some pressure on it. It's almost stopped bleeding."

Nick swallows, blinking his eyes open, confused, but he does what he's told, puts his hand up to hold the cloth to the wound. As Nick does, he realizes that the cloth the hunter was using is the purple scarf Joe gave him, that blood's soaking into the dark fabric. Nick wants to move it away, keep it clean, but then realizes it's too late for that, that it's already stained, so he just gives in, presses it into the wound carefully.

"Is your stuff upstairs?" the dark-haired one says, and when Nick nods, he starts up to get it, taking the stairs two at a time, collecting clothes as he goes. He'll probably see the mussed bed when he gets up there, notice how the room smells like sex, but Nick can't seem to care. The redhead comes back with the first-aid kit and goes about bandaging Nick up. Both hunters are acting normal and business-like, like the world's not any different, and Nick feels so strange.

Joe's dead. It's all over. Nick's heart is pounding in his ears and he knows Joe's been dead for a year, but now his body's actually stopped moving, and Nick's so cold and empty. Joe was the last brother he had.

He feels dazed and woozy as he's bandaged up, as the blood's wiped off him, as he stands up and gets dressed. He keeps expecting Joe to open his eyes, to smile at Nick again with his horrible teeth, for it all to have been a mistake, but Joe doesn't, the corpse just lies there. Nick's still holding the blood-stiff scarf Joe gave him, twisting it in his hands.

The hunters are getting their stuff together, arguing about whether the redhead's well enough to get on the road or if he should rest since he got knocked out. "I'm fine," the redhead says. "Besides, I think we should all probably get to a hospital. We can probably make Columbus by tonight."

The dark-haired one looks dubious, putting his stake back into his belt. "Yeah, we'll travel real fast," he says. "Everyone all blood-lossed and concussed." He looks over at Nick, and Nick suddenly realizes that Nick's included in that group, that this guy's just casually making Nick a part of the 'everyone.' That's so strange. As Nick blinks, surprised, the hunter says to Nick, "You think you can make it to Columbus?"

Nick's still so stunned at the inclusion that it takes him a second to respond. "Um, yeah," he finally says. He hasn't been part of a group with anyone but Joe in a long time.

The dark-haired one shrugs, looking at his friend, a shrug like he's tried to talk sense into them, but whatever, if everyone's bound and determined to do the opposite. "Oh, fine," he says. "Let's get out of here then. It smells disgusting anyway." He swings his pack up onto his back.

The redhead smiles, picking up his own pack, and Nick does the same, feeling vague and distanced, like everything's a little unreal. Joe's body's still lying behind them, dark in the shadows.

As they go around the corner to the front door, for a second the light dazzles Nick's eyes, so he can't see at all. It's been so long since he's seen actual sunlight. He blinks and blinks and by the time he can see again, the redheaded hunter's walking out the door, and Nick sees the sunlight catch his hair, making it halo around his head for a second, bright and shining.

The dark-haired hunter gestures for Nick to go out the door next, like they want Nick in between them, like they can keep him safe, even though Nick barely knows what safe means anymore. Joe's dead behind him, stake through his heart in a house that smells like death, and he won't come after Nick ever again, and Nick feels like crying.

Nick hesitates for a moment, looking back at Joe, the pale limbs of his body, the sockets of his shadowed eyes, and then finally turns away.

He walks out into the sunlight.

**  
END


End file.
